Learn to Have Been
by chezchuckles
Summary: This is a Season 7 supposition only. I have no knowledge of spoilers or teasers, this is purely an idea at what their winter would look like in 2014-2015 after that season-ending fiery accident.
1. Chapter 1

**Learn to Have Been**

* * *

**A/N: **This is a Season 7 supposition only. I have no knowledge of spoilers or teasers, this is purely an idea at what their winter would look like in 2014-2015 after that season-ending fiery accident.

Without the sublime efforts of** muppet47** in** Castling **and the beautiful angst found in** Jane Doe **by** seilleanmor**, this work might not have the elements it does. My indebtedness goes to those two wonderful authors, with the hope that this is something entirely its own. We shall see.

* * *

She reminds me of now  
and now and now.  
I must learn  
to have been so lucky.

-_Another Poem on My Daughter's Birthday_, Craig Morgan Teicher

* * *

In the wide and lonely bed, Rick Castle rubs a hand down his jaw and swallows, mentally edging away from the sensation in the dark bedroom.

Usually he wakes to falling. Sharp, the jerk of consciousness like being doused with cold water.

Tonight it wasn't falling off a cliff, it was flames.

Which is particularly strange, since he was never in the flames. Those are _her_ dreams.

He lifts his arm and drops it over his eyes, the pressure grounding him in reality once more, and the night begins to filter through his senses: the soft breathing of his wife, the heavy warmth of the bed covers, the scent of musky soap. Kate's sleeping presence slowly fills in the blank spaces, snaking and twining around him and holding him to now.

He breathes. He lets out a long sigh that expels darkness from his lungs. He's okay again. Now everything is back to how it should be.

Slowly, Castle lowers his arm and turns in bed, his eyes seeking out the shape of her shoulder and the flare of her hip in the darkness. He shifts ever so slightly and brings himself within a breath of her body.

He might not remember much, but this is entirely familiar on a level that eases the fist in his guts. A gut check. Like sonar, she calls back to him in a shape right and good and necessary.

Castle tilts forward just that last distance and brings his forehead to the harsh angle of her shoulder blade, warmth seeping into his skin from under her shirt.

His body eases, his eyes close, but he's careful to keep his breathing even, shallow, careful not to wake her.

He's done too much of that, too much keeping her up at night, and she deserves dreamless.

At the back of his throat, he can still taste the gasoline as it leaked from the car.

He swallows it down, swallows again, and holds on to the warmth of her shoulder blade at his forehead like an anchor.

* * *

He wakes late. Too late. He hates waking to emptiness. His circadian rhythms are all off, have been since this spring and the accident.

Not really an accident though, was it?

Kate is there in a moment, as if sensing him, the half-hovering she does now. She smiles, a too-real thing plastered over her relief, and she sets the coffee mug at his bedside table, crawls back in with him cradling her own cup. She's delayed the morning for him because she knows; it's nearly ten o'clock.

Castle forces himself to sit up in bed, fists pushing into the mattress, and then he smiles back at her. "Thanks for your shoulder in the night."

"My shoulder-" She stops, that look on her face he hates to see. But he promised to tell her; she was furious and wounded at his silences, and he hates that more than this struck-painful look she gets when he opens his mouth. "You had another dream?"

"No," he shrugs. "I guess memory. They come like that. I don't know."

"Falling?" she murmurs, but she's careful to put her mouth to the mug as if she can bury the word in coffee.

"Something like that," he hedges. He was _in_ the fire this time. No point in saying what didn't happen.

And yet.

Maybe it did. How is he to know? He wasn't burned, but maybe he was pulled free while the flames licked up.

Her hand comes to his shoulder and squeezes, trying for fraternal or perhaps that locker-room police-precinct stuff designed to buck them both up, but she can't quite bring it off. The gesture degenerates into her head crashing against his side and her fingers gripping the back of his neck and warm Kate Beckett plastered to him like she can't bear to let go.

They're working on it.

She's working on it; he just takes it. He curls his fingers around her thigh and holds on to her, dropping his kiss to the top of her head. He was the one in a near-fatal accident, run off the road, nearly engulfed in flames, and _more_ and she's the one with PTSD.

He's glad it's not him. Grateful to have so much of that time gone.

So much of the time he _was_ gone, and she remembers vividly every hollow, broken day.

He's stopped apologizing. Dr Burke made him promise to never say it again in regards to the accident, to everything he's missing.

He nudges his nose down to her temple and softly kisses her, since words aren't necessary for apologies either, since his regret isn't limited to an automatic phrase. Because he is - he is so very sorry he's done this to her. He kisses the corner of her eye where she didn't manage to clean the make-up off, kisses the sharp jut of her cheekbone where he never finds tears. She doesn't cry; there is, at least, that.

He takes her coffee from her fingers and shifts over her, putting the mug on her bedside table and conveniently landing in the cradle of her body.

She lets out a not-crying, won't-cry sigh, and her arms slowly wind around his neck. Her fingers comb through his hair, scratch lightly at his scalp, soothing herself more maybe than him.

"You remember this?" she murmurs, smiling at him. So soft, so joyful to have him here - all in a split second's time.

"I remember," he promises. Every time, every touch. He knows her fingers better than his own. Her body was carried around inside his skin, her heart in the protective cage of his ribs for the whole time he was gone - he knows it. It _has _to be true, or how else did he ever get back to her? "I remember all of you."

"All I ask," she sighs.

He lowers his mouth to her throat and starts his adoration there.

* * *

"Coffee's cold," he murmurs against her temple.

Kate turns to look at her mug on the bedside table, regards the thing. "It wasn't any good anyway," she sighs.

"I'm sorry," he grumbles. They both flinch - he's got to stop apologizing for everything - but she knows it's instinctive. She knows it's because he's truly regretful, because he's a good and sweet man who wants only to make it right.

"It's okay," she shrugs. "Forgetting how to make my coffee isn't really high on my list." It's a lie, it is, but she won't try to explain how desolate it made her that first week. When he stood at the counter and couldn't comprehend the machine.

She'll never make a cup as good as he does. Did. As good as her partner.

This is a new man. Her _husband_. He's not the Rick Castle who invaded her precinct and pulled her pigtails. That man is lost. But her husband is here.

"You've got physical therapy in about two hours," she nudges.

Castle sighs at her collarbone and lifts himself from her body; she raises her eyes to watch him go, the strong line of him and the work of muscle and bone as he moves. She draws a hand up to the back of his arm, squeezes, gets his attention even as he shifts to the side of the bed.

"Want help in the shower?"

One corner of his mouth curls in that new smile, her husband's smile. She likes that look, the heat that takes its time, checks her out. It's not the same, but it's a good one.

"Do I want help in the shower?" he echoes. He makes it dirty. She _meant_ it dirty, even after the soft and tender way he loved her this morning. Dirty would be a relief, would break up the tight knot in her chest when she thinks about not having him.

"Should I take that as a yes?" she hums. She even finds herself smiling, a little silly with how good it feels to finally be able to do as they like.

He has PT in two hours but it's mostly to keep neural connections firing, to keep open those pathways. He's strong and he's solid, and even if his knee hurts him from time to time, she figures that's from the skiing and not the accident. This is mostly for his brain, for his memory.

"Beckett, you coming?"

She startles out of herself and finds him halfway towards the bathroom, not even looking at her.

_Beckett_.

He hasn't called her Beckett since the accident.

Stunned, she stumbles out of bed and races after him, her heart in her throat, catching him by the arm and turning him around, desperate to see.

But it's not her partner who looks back at her. Only her husband.

"What? So eager?" he chuckles. His eyebrows go up like they never did, and though his smile is soft, it's not the leer, it's not the triumphant tease that it used to be.

He's a sweet man.

But he's not really Castle.


	2. Chapter 2

**Learn to Have Been**

* * *

_June 2014_

**X**

He was found on I-27, walking in faded green scrubs pants and a New York Knicks t-shirt, no hat, his nose and cheeks sunburned, his hair shaved so close that his scalp had already begun to peel.

Jake Campbell was a volunteer firefighter with Suffolk County who took one look at this skeletonized John Doe and drove him in to the hospital himself, not sure the confused man could wait for an ambulance. Interstate 27 was sometimes called the Sunrise Highway, and it was clear to Jake that this guy had seen too many sunrises out here and needed immediate treatment.

But it was a long ride.

Campbell didn't like the look of the man in his passenger seat, didn't care for the way his eyes slid away from a thing like he couldn't hang on to it. Campbell asked careful and slow questions, told him as many times as he required that they were driving in to a hospital, and he even put a hand on the man's shoulder when he violently flinched as a crazy vacationer flew past them in a black Mercedes.

Didn't seem to help. It wasn't right, whatever happened to this man, wasn't right at all.

Campbell got on his radio when he was closer to town, put the word out about the man in his truck, had dispatch call the chief. The guy rubbed at the top of his head and made a strange noise, like bewilderment, and then he turned to Campbell and cleared his throat.

"Where am I?"

"East Patchogue," Campbell said easily. "I'm Jake. You know who you are?"

"I'm supposed to get married," the man said, but his words fell off at the end and Campbell couldn't be sure. They were the first words in any kind of sentence structure, and so he figured the guy was bound to be jumbled still.

At the hospital, the man still hadn't produced a name, though he _tried_; Campbell could see the trying in him, and he felt pity for the guy. He'd been formidable once, most likely; he had a tall frame and wide shoulders, lines around his eyes and the corners of his mouth that meant he'd smiled a lot. But he was too thin and there were scars around his neck, like someone had taken rope and twisted, and his voice was a wreck when it came.

Campbell didn't want to just drop him off and leave him, but he'd been on his way to work, so he hung out in the hallway until the chief came. Brady patted him on the shoulder and said he'd take it from there.

It took Campbell a while before he got the sight of that man out of his mind's eye, like the walking dead.

**X**

Chief Brady was the one to identify him. It was his first John Doe, but he'd never expected to come face-to-face with the missing and kidnapped Richard Castle, though he'd been thinking about the man quite a lot since the news had broken nearly three weeks ago.

So when Brady had pushed aside the curtain in the Emergency Department, he nearly had a heart attack. The man on the gurney gave him a lopsided look, as if something registered, and Brady hustled inside, yanked the curtain closed around them.

"Rick."

The man's mouth opened and then closed again, but he gave a slow nod. It wasn't a good confirmation, had no real authority behind it, but Richard Castle cleared his throat and said, "That's me."

If there was surprise in his voice, Brady pretended to ignore it.

The missing Richard Castle, right here in the East Patchogue, New York, 11772; it wasn't even a real township, just a hamlet with a census-designation. What was he doing _here_?

Regardless, Brady would need a couple of guys up here, stand guard. Who knew what had happened to Rick Castle? He was cooperative but he didn't have answers, and Brady knew it was over his head, out of his league. Just as they'd proven it to him nearly two years ago when a body had dropped into Richard Castle's pool.

"Well, Mr Castle, let me ring up your people, get a deputy up here outside your door. How's the neck?" Brady made a motion at his own throat, and Richard Castle brought a hand up to his neck, surprised.

"I don't - don't know. Is it bad?"

Brady blinked. "No. Not bad. See what the doc says."

He gave a nod of good-bye and moved back through the curtain, his mouth dry.

He called Detective Beckett first, straight off, and she answered at the 12th precinct in Manhattan with a kind of quiver to her voice that made Brady feel both sick and exultant at the same time.

"Detective Beckett this is Chief Brady-"

"You have news?" she rushed in. He'd talked to her once after the accident, called her up on his own because the idea that Richard Castle had been killed in a fiery accident just seemed impossible. That'd been when he'd heard about the kidnapping, and he'd promised her whatever help she needed from him, both of them expecting that day would never come.

So of course Brady found his own voice shaking when he told her the news. "It's news alright. He's shown up here, side of the road; he's okay but dehydrated and possibly had a previous brain injury_."_

_"Shown up_-"

"Richard Castle. He's alive. He's here. East Patchogue State Hospital, ma'am, and-"

He didn't know how much of that she heard, because she was at the hospital in only forty-nine minutes, even though Chief Brady knew for sure that it took at least an hour and a half if you were lucky and there wasn't any construction - and with the harsh winter they'd had, there was always construction.

"He's here?" she said.

Brady was still adjusting to the fact that _she_ was here; she looked breathless and harried but somehow beautiful, which maybe he shouldn't be seeing at all. So Brady nodded and led her towards the doctors' break room on the neurology floor, wanting to fill her in before the big reveal. Richard Castle had been moved while she'd been in transit, and at least now there were two officers and a door for privacy.

Beckett didn't sit, and Brady went back out and rounded up the doctor and brought him back to the detective, made the introductions.

She took it like a stoic, eyes flat as steel as she listened to every word the attending said, and then she went into Castle's room alone and the door closed after her and that was it.

Chief Brady never saw their reunion, didn't know if Rick Castle knew her, but he must have. He must have because Detective Beckett had him transferred to Columbia University Neurology Center the very next day and she never left his side. After that, Brady didn't know what happened to them, but he heard the case was still open, that they were still hunting the kidnapper.

**X**

Alexis crossed her arms over her chest just to keep her hands still, keep her heart in the cage of her ribs where it belonged. Every breath was choked by the furious pounding of her pulse because she couldn't quite believe it.

She was the one who met them in the ambulance bay at Columbia, and she was the one who saw him first when those doors opened. Her father was so thin; he'd lost so much weight that his cheekbones made his face look wrong, his nose was too prominent and his jaw jutted out. His eyes were the same, that same squint to them when he looked at her, and she clasped her hands together, the smile bubbling up to her lips.

Kate got out of the rear of the bus before the gurney, and the moment Alexis saw her father fully, the moment he was let down to the pavement, he smiled back at her.

She cried when he said her name, flew into his outstretched arms, the three of them tangled at the gurney because Kate, of course, wouldn't let go of him either. How could she? How could either of them ever? Alexis had to step back when the attendants rolled him through the bay and up the ramp, into the receiving lobby of the ambulance bay, but she didn't go far. She was right there.

"Hey, pumpkin," he said, kept saying, over and over. "Hey, it's okay. It's okay now."

She walked with the gurney as the attendants rolled him along, holding his hand even as Kate walked on his other side. Their eyes kept meeting over his words, the way he repeated himself as if he didn't realize it, but whatever knowledge they had, they couldn't speak aloud.

She didn't want to say. Her father knew her, and he knew Kate, and that was enough.

Gram was in the room when they wheeled him in, and she broke out into messy tears when Castle curled his hand around her wrist. Alexis turned her head away, her lungs stretched tight and she saw Kate watching him ravenously, her eyes cataloging every detail, absorbing it all.

That was when Alexis figured out that Kate had arranged it this way on purpose, for a reason, and not just to protect her and her grandmother. That Kate was protecting _him_.

Allowing people into his world one at a time, noting his reactions and his memory, studying and analyzing.

There was more to this reunion than Alexis knew; something had happened to him and Kate was afraid.

"Dad," she choked out, unable to help it.

Her father untangled from Gram and held his arms out to her; she came into his side and fell over him, snuggling into his neck because he smelled like antiseptic and himself too, both things, and she had been lost and adrift in the idea of never having him again. Even if there were things wrong, even if it wasn't all right, it was, it was. It was okay, like he'd said. It was okay.

His arm came up around her, hooking and landing her there, and the fuzzy short hair at his scalp itched her cheek and she was crying now; she hadn't meant to, but she was crying.

"It's okay," he rasped at her ear. His voice was so cracked; it sounded like someone else, but the sounds were his, the arm was his, the smell was his. "It's okay. Whatever happened, I don't remember a thing, Alexis, so don't cry. It happened and it's done and we're going forward. Don't cry, pumpkin."

She nodded against him, she was still crying. "The car was on fire," she said. Of all the stupid things-

"I heard." He didn't say anything more, and Alexis waited, thinking that there should be more - there was always more with her father - but he just petted her hair down with his hand heavy at her head. After a moment, he seemed to sense that more was required because he said, "I hope Pi has been - a support to you."

Alexis laughed, heard Kate and Gram with their startled laughter as well, and Alexis pulled back, swiping at the tears with the heels of her hands. "Da-ad."

But he wasn't looking at her like he'd made a joke. He was looking at her like he'd meant it.

Alexis's breath caught. "Dad. I broke up with Pi. Months ago. I - you knew that. I moved back in with you and Kate."

"Oh, good," her father said in a rush. Relief spilled over his face, earnest and eager. "I'm so glad. I really don't think he's right for you, Alexis. I really - really am so glad. He's nice enough, and I tried. Those bees. I tried, Alexis. I could talk about bees, I guess, for you."

She was hurt somehow; it hurt that he was saying this. Not about Pi, but how her father wasn't - it wasn't right. "Since you like him so much, should I bring him in to visit?" she muttered. She hadn't meant to sound nasty, but it came out like that. The banality of her dad's conversation was throwing her; his sincerity.

But he only gave her a bare grimace. He thought she meant it; he didn't hear the sarcasm in her voice. "The bongo drums have to stay outside the door. If he comes. I have this persistent headache."

Kate sucked in a breath and Alexis glanced over at her, realized that Kate hadn't been sure it was still there - those memories.

"Castle?"

He didn't respond at first, a blip of nothing that made Alexis's heart squeeze, but then he turned a smile to Kate, openly sweet, a smile Alexis had never seen on his face before. Not that he wasn't sweet. Her father was generous and compassionate but he wasn't... this.

"Yeah, I remember the drums. And waking in that hospital to you hovering right there. You saved my life," he murmured. His fingers snagged Kate's and hung on, but Alexis had to look away.

She wasn't sure she was allowed to see that, the naked adoration on his face, the way he seemed to be subsumed in Kate.

"I'm sorry I don't remember what happened to me. The accident," he said then. "I'm so sorry. It's just - there's nothing."

"Oh, darling, no need to apologize," Martha said grandly, pushing past Alexis to hug him again. "You're here. That's all we want. You're back where you belong."

But Alexis wasn't sure if _all_ of him was back.

He smiled up at them like a little boy, a guileless, clueless little boy, and Alexis didn't know what they were supposed to do now.

**X**


	3. Chapter 3

**Learn to Have Been**

* * *

_February 2015_

After two hours of PT, Castle goes across the hall to the occupational therapist, twisting his wedding band on his finger as he does. He sits down before Beth, a soft-spoken woman with a blunt haircut and a vague presence, who never seems to waver. She pushes a set of wooden blocks over to him and Castle starts the puzzle wordlessly, focusing on matching the colors; he's done it before, he's done it at every session so far.

There's something comforting in that. There's no one else he's got to live up to here.

"What year is this?" she asks, beginning their usual interrogation.

"2015," he answers automatically. He's learned to not think too hard about the questions, because he can't be wrong. Even when he answers incorrectly, it's not wrong. It's all about making connections and keeping the connections he's made.

"Your middle name?"

"Alexan - Edgar," he corrects. That's one he messes up almost every time. He knows he changed his name, it came up in the thorough neurological test he took back at the beginning, and Kate's explained it. But at his core, he's still the Richard Alexander part if not the Rodgers. He's definitely Castle. Richard Alexander Castle. Even though he knows, intellectually, that's not how it went.

That's not how it goes.

It's strange how the mind works. He's kept most things; the important stuff is there. She's there. But small pieces have dropped out. Edgar dropped out, like the name was smudged by the accident, like the hit on his head and the days held captive made a jumble of his kaleidoscope.

"How long have you been married?"

His lips quirk and he glances up at the occupational therapist. Beth has thrown in a new one today. "That's been since the accident."

"Is that your answer?" A hint of impudence.

"We married right before Christmas," he says, his heart feeling soft. Thinking about that day does it to him, pushes into the deepest parts, touches the soul of him where he knows he's remained undamaged.

The soul can't be damaged. She's in his soul, Kate, and she's safe there, and he feels peaceful when he retreats to that place.

"When before Christmas?"

He's startled out of his retreat by Beth's voice, and he glances up at her with a strange thought: he's not expecting it to be Beth questioning him. He's not expecting this woman sitting in front of him.

Who was he expecting?

"Winter solstice," he says, jumping in to keep her from thinking he doesn't know. "December 21st, shortest day of the year."

"So that makes it...?"

"Little under two months," he answers, proud he can do the math, proud to have her. "Best two months of my life."

"Have you ever been married before?"

"Once. No. Twice." Castle winces, closing his eyes. He keeps - it keeps dropping out. How come he can't keep hold of these things? "Married twice before. Meredith. Gina." _Who do I think is asking the questions?_

"Any children?"

"Alexis," he says with relish. And a faint relief. He never forgets Alexis any more. He had such a wall about that, once; at the beginning of therapy, his brain wouldn't let him think about her.

_He doesn't let himself think about her; he thinks of Kate, Beckett, always Kate; she'll find him-_

"Very good," Beth says then, reaching forward and jostling him. She tugs the blocks out from under his hands and he realizes he's finished the puzzle, made the colors match up without even noticing. "Try this one. A little harder this time."

For a moment, it wasn't Beth asking the questions, and then it was again. When Beth asks and his fingers do the puzzle, the walls slide down again, like the movement and thinking that's required for the puzzle distract him from guarding his truth.

"Try this one," Beth repeats. "Rick?"

He's never seen this puzzle. But he puts his hands on it and focuses, stars and pointed-ends that have to fit together.

"Where is Alexis now?"

"Huh?" He lifts his eyes from the plastic starburst shapes, comes back slowly to Beth.

If she's frustrated with him, it doesn't show. Nothing shows but patience. "Alexis. Where is your daughter now?"

Alexis is... "In college. But she lives with me and Kate. Course, I don't know at this very moment, but she'll text me. She comes home for dinner on Wednesday nights. So tomorrow night for sure I'll see her."

Beth gives him an encouraging smile and nods to the puzzle; he glances down and blinks at the stars.

"What's Alexis's favorite food?"

"Used to be mac and cheese. I'd make it from the box because she hated it from scratch. Go figure." Rick smiles because - it's funny. That's funny. His girl didn't like real mac and cheese, just the fake stuff. He thought it was funny then, didn't he? And it is. Maybe his sense of humor is coming back.

"And now?"

Castle lowers his head to the puzzle, pleased the emotion is there. "Since you asked me this last week, I asked her. I'm not sure I knew before, because she told me she just found this Italian place that makes a chicken sorrento that she loves. New favorite."

"Really?" Beth asks, and she sounds surprised.

Castle glances up, glad to abandon the puzzle. "Really. Balsamic vinegar. That's the secret."

"You asked your daughter because I asked last time?"

Oh, _now_ he gets it. "Yeah," he grins. "Yeah, I did. Looks like some short term memory made it."

Beth grins back and suddenly that mousy nothing transforms with her smile. He wishes Kate were here; he really wants to see Kate. Kate used to smile at him like that sometimes.

"You asked Alexis about her favorite food and you remembered to tell me. Do you remember how to solve the star puzzle?"

Castle groans and drops his eyes back to the table. "No." He's had the star puzzle before?

"No problem. It's all right," Beth assures him. "It's okay, Rick. Your hands will develop muscle memory over time, and eventually it will break through. Just as it has for the others."

Muscle memory in his hands.

"It's very good that you remembered to ask your daughter her favorite food. See? Aspects of your short term memory _are_ there, and the puzzles are helping."

If muscle memory can rebuild these inane puzzles she keeps giving him, if muscle memory can attach enough significance to the act that he asks his daughter a banal question about her favorite food, can muscle memory guide him at the keyboard of his laptop too?

Maybe it's time to try.

* * *

She has four hours before she has to go pick up Castle from back-to-back therapy sessions at Columbia Neurology.

Which is why she's standing on the crumbling asphalt with her hands on her hips, hoping to find something everyone else has overlooked - for nearly eight months now.

She can't stay away.

Interstate 27 is a long ribbon of grey to the bleak horizon, the vanishing point disappearing into a formless winter. She licks her chapped lips and swivels her head to the opposite direction. Jake Campbell's truck is approaching and she waits for him to pull off behind her own car at the shoulder.

"Ma'am - Detective," he corrects, slamming the door shut. "How's he doing?"

"Pretty good. It's mostly all there," she says, offering him a smile and more optimism than she feels. "Thank you."

"Glad I was here," he shrugs. He's about fifty, salt and pepper hair, wearing a light blue t-shirt under his open jacket. His belt buckle is silver and well-made, but he's a local, a native, and he has that reserved distrust about him despite his good samaritan status.

"What can you tell me?" she asks. She sees her own breath before her in an icy cloud.

"He was headed west back to town," Campbell starts, shaking his head. "Or well, towards New York City, I guess."

"When you say 'back to town', was that because-"

"Naw, sorry. Just because I was headed out. He was walking on the side of the road in scrubs and a t-shirt and those paper shoes. Hot as blazes."

"Paper shoes?"

"Yeah like at a hospital. Cut up though, cause they're flimsy. Head was down, watching the road-" Campbell closes his eyes a moment like he's thinking and when they pop open again, she realizes he has the same intense blue that Castle has. "You know his hair was cut so short that I thought he was a soldier at first."

"A soldier."

"Buzzed, ears sticking out. And he looked fit - from a distance. Muscled. But up close I saw it was just - you know - how his bones jutted from his skin, all the weight he'd lost. He looked - not so good."

"He's better now," she assures him. "His mother has every meal catered and half the city is dropping off casseroles at our doorstep."

Campbell laughs at that, a rolling and easy laugh, reassured by her. Kate smiles back and her gratefulness for this man, for being here that day in June, fills her with so much she can't speak.

She has questions, but Campbell seems willing to wait for her to find her voice again, willing to fill in the details, because he puts his hands deep in his coat pockets and nods down towards the stand of three trees on the side of the road. "Down there. Stopped him right there. Saw he was confused and I reached out and touched his arm and he flinched."

He flinched. Kate steps closer, walking towards those now-bare trees, imagining her partner out here, her _husband_, and it makes her want to break things.

Someone did this to him. She _knows_ who did this to him, and still they've got nothing.

"I took him by the arm but he pulled out of my grip. I thought then he was gonna make it, that pull back, asserting himself. Yeah, thought right then, this guy's okay. He's gonna be okay."

Kate reaches out and touches the bark of the tree, imagines Castle shaded by the leaves overhead, his sunburned skin needing the relief. She presses her lips together, fighting it off.

"I asked him his name but he didn't answer me. Got him up into the truck and drove him to the hospital. He was all right. He was just fine, except quiet and not talking, but I didn't think nothing was wrong with that."

"He's... a talker," Kate gives out, a grim smile on her lips that she can't hide.

"I didn't know he was," Campbell shrugs. "So it seemed fine to me. First few things he said were jumbled up, and then he said he was supposed to get married, and I thought that was more nonsense but I found out-" Campbell nods to her and gives her a hesitant grin, as if sensing that she's not quite okay.

"He was," she affirms. "We were. We are." She shrugs and thumbs the ring. "We're married now. No accidents, thank God."

Campbell gives something like a laugh, but it's stilted. "Not sure what happened to him, but I knew then it wasn't right. He sat there in my truck and I had to even put a hand on him when we got cut off by a tourist. He jumped out of his skin."

Kate is brought back to the moment in a rush, her eyes sharp on Campbell. "You were cut off by a tourist?"

"Well now that I know he was in that accident, it's no wonder he reacted like that."

"Like what?" she says, making her words even, keeping her tone steady.

"He flinched. A violent flinch, you know the kind where your whole body moves. He nearly hit his head against the passenger window."

"What made him flinch? You said you were cut off?"

"On the road," Campbell nods, gesturing towards the interstate. "A minute after I picked him up. A black Mercedes came up on me and then passed in the oncoming lane, cut us off as it came back over. I had to brake but your guy - well, he flinched. Damn tourists."

A black Mercedes.

"Was it a man or woman behind the wheel?"

"I don't know. Didn't see the driver. I was afraid your man had knocked his head so I was looking more at him."

Kate gazes down the stretch of I-27 towards the city, and then she turns her head to glance east, away, where the black Mercedes had come from, where Castle might have been held.

It's not much, but it's more than they had.

* * *

Her mind is still spinning with ideas about that black Mercedes by the time she parks in the hospital garage. She has some latitude from her Captain, but she has to tread carefully. She's got one shot at this, and if she makes a mistake, she'll get yanked off his case. Gates spelled it out for her, _my detectives don't work their own cases._

Kate stands in the hallway outside the therapy room with her arms crossed and her hands cupping her elbows, holding herself together. Last time he was surprised to find her waiting, even though she picks him up after every therapy appointment; she does this every time.

She hopes he's expecting her. She hopes he remembers.

A nudge at her ankle makes her startle, and a quiet apology sounds somewhere behind her. Kate turns and finds a dog in the hallway of the therapy center, golden-haired and sedate, with a man just behind it.

"She has a nose for people who need comforting," the man says, smiling gently. "The dog. So she wants you to pet her, if you don't mind. It might help."

Everyone here is kind. It's rubbed off on Rick, made him exceedingly polite. She hates it.

But she bends over and pets the dog, ruffling the fur at its neck, reminded of Royal and joint custody and the way Castle was so patient, so unintentionally endearing at the same time.

Okay. So Castle has always been kind. It's not just the accident. They're all in confusion, trying to find the best way forward, and damn, she's stupidly grateful for this dog. She needed this.

Kate sinks heavily into one of the plastic chairs lining the hall and cups the dog's face in her hands, scratching her ears and feeling pathetically grateful. "What's her name?"

"Ananda."

"Oh, thank you, Ananda," she murmurs, rubbing her thumbs over the arc of those wise old eyes. "You knew I needed it." Kate lifts her head and offers a smile. "And thank you...?"

"Mark. I'm a therapist here. I do physical therapy mostly with three year olds."

"Three year olds?" Kate smiles. "Challenging."

"The dog helps - she's a therapy dog. I'm guessing you don't have a three year old in there," Mark says, nodding to the door she's been waiting in front of.

"Despite how it looks," she admits to the hovering, "not a three year old. A husband. He was - in an accident. Some damage."

Mark nods slowly; he looks sad and she hates that. She hates that they all look at her like _oh, it might never be better than this_.

She doesn't need better than this. Castle is alive, he's _alive_, and that is the answer to her prayers, the wildest dream she's ever had, the hope beyond all ludicrous hopes.

Castle is alive.

Even if he's not quite the same man.


	4. Chapter 4

**Learn to Have Been**

* * *

_June 2014_

**X**

Nikki liked to study them. Their brains, yes, of course, but she thought it made more sense to take a look at the person first. Then when she sat down at the computer screen and the pictures started to form, she had the mental overlay of the expressions in their eyes when they went in or the tight ways they held their mouths as they filled out the forms.

You couldn't tell much from an MRI on first glance. Unless there was a lesion - those were obvious. But Nikki got the complicated ones because she had the best touch - the doctors sent them to her because she had a way of keeping them still and calm and the sequences went without a hitch.

Nikki stood when the two entered the imaging center's screening room. She introduced herself and the man smiled when he shook her hand. Yet he still looked nervous.

"I know someone named Nikki," he said. "I'm Rick Castle."

The woman at his side startled and gave him a look like that wasn't quite right, but the man flushed and hastily self-corrected.

"I should say, I named a character Nikki."

"About the same thing, isn't it?" Nikki answered. His resultant smile made her pleased; she liked to keep them at ease when they were fresh like this, new patients unused to the procedure and not sure what to expect.

She gestured for the two to sit down and the woman, Kate, handed over the paperwork they'd filled out in the lobby. The pre-screening forms were thorough, and so was Nikki. She went through each item and asked questions.

"You checked that you have metal in your body?" she asked. She wanted to be sure. "This was from an operation to correct a broken-"

"Knee. My knee. I have two screws," he blurted out. He looked proud of himself and Nikki concluded that this was more than a car accident. Brain injuries were never simple, and it looked like he was struggling to remember, to line the pieces up correctly.

"Screws are fine," she reassured them. "Surgeons specifically use non-magnetic screws and plates. It won't mess up the machine."

"Oh, good. I thought - what other option is there?" Rick babbled. "If I can't go in the machine, then..."

He trailed off and gave his partner a look; she brushed her fingers at his knee as if to warn him it was too much.

Nikki had seen some of that too in her fifteen years; the filter was gone in head injuries. The personality altered. She couldn't count how many daughters came with their stroke-victim parent and apologized profusely, _He/she isn't normally so rude_.

"Your weight on the form - this is an accurate amount?" she asked. She sized them up, both of them, and was reassured already that it was.

"It's correct," the woman answered. "They weighed him when he was - when - when he came in to the ER." She shut down after that, eyes withdrawing, her body held tightly in the chair.

"All right," Nikki said. "The scanner requires an accurate weight, so I ask to make sure. If the hospital weighed you, then that's perfect."

"Is it a long time in that tube?" the man asked.

Nikki gave him another quiet smile. "Not long. And we'll take breaks. Did Casey at the front desk walk you through the procedure?" she asked.

The woman nodded - Kate - and circled her fingers around the man's hand. He startled but clung to that one connection, his fingers blanching white around hers.

He had fine motor function; Nikki had seen him walk in the door - a little off-balance as he took his seat, but she saw from his chart that he was in physical therapy. It was helping; that was a good sign.

"All right then. We'll get started, okay? It's my voice you'll hear when you're in the scanner, and ma'am?, you can wait in the control room with me. You both ready?"

"No," he said, voice tight. But a kind of horror washed over his face and he shook his head, sheepish. "Yes. I'm ready. Let's get it over with."

Nikki stood and they followed, but she could feel their brittle and held-breath tension like walking through ice.

**X**

"You're doing so well," Nikki said into the mic.

Inside the scanner, Rick lifted his little finger from the squeeze ball to show he'd heard her, though he could have relaxed if he had wanted - they were between sequences. Nikki was inputting the next sequence even as she checked the images she'd just gotten, but there was a blur in the frontal lobe.

"Hey, Rick?" she said. "I need to do that scan over again. But in the meantime, you're allowed to breathe, you know."

There was a weak kind of laughter, and Nikki turned her head to the woman standing at attention in the room. She had her arms crossed over her chest and was gripping her elbows, something fierce on her face.

Nikki muted the mic. "Would you like to talk to him? We've had to redo each of the last three sequences, and I think he'd like to hear your voice."

The woman startled, jerked forward as if on a string. Nikki indicated the chair she'd drawn up beside her - as she had when they'd first started this - and now the woman sat down.

Nikki unmuted the mic and Kate leaned in.

"Rick?"

Over the speaker, they could hear the rush of breath he let out and the warning light went off on the panel in front of Nikki. He'd squeezed the emergency ball, the one they gave each patient to let the operator know if they had to get out.

Nikki pushed in. "Do I need you slide you out, Rick? Or was that-"

"Accident," he said, his voice sounding light. "Sorry, just an accident. Kate?"

"Yeah, babe. I'm right here."

He said nothing more to that, and Nikki glanced over to her, but the woman had settled back in the chair, her shoulders relaxed.

Oh-kay. Nikki set up the last sequence once more. "Rick? Are you ready to try this again?"

"Yeah."

"I'll talk to you after the clicks," Nikki assured him. She started the next sequence and glanced over at the woman sitting beside her, but Kate's eyes were sharp with anger, her body rigid in the chair.

**X**

"What can you see? Does it tell you?"

Nikki had already stood to open the heavy, sealed door between the control room and the scanner room when the woman finally spoke up. She turned around and saw that Kate was staring through the glass towards her partner, eyes flicking to the images on the computer and back.

"I can tell you that it's difficult to determine anything at all on first view," Nikki said calmly. "With a traumatic brain injury, you can sometimes see a lesion - clear as day - but that's not the case here."

"The neuro said it was a traumatic-"

"He's not wrong," Nikki interrupted. "But most issues aren't things someone like you or I can see at first blush."

The woman turned her head to Nikki and the anger that threaded through her whole body seemed to unravel. Now Nikki realized what it actually was. Not anger at all - fear. She had been - was - afraid.

"Hey, the doctors will take a look at the image we got here today, and they'll study it. I saw Rick's chart - he has a fantastic group taking care of him. You're in great hands."

The woman nodded and her arms dropped at her sides. "Can I - go in there now?"

"Of course," Nikki smiled. She unsealed the door and opened it up. On the other side, the bed of the scanner was releasing out of the tube. Nikki came forward and methodically withdrew the head coil, allowing the man to sit up.

He gave her a weak smile but his eyes shifted right past her to Kate. She said his name and came close, and Rick canted forward into her, his forehead hitting her shoulder.

Nikki didn't say a word, simply left them to slip out into the control room, give them a moment. She had expected the man to need the squeeze 'escape' ball, but he had kept it together. She glanced through the window, watched as the woman cradled him at his neck, her long fingers soothing in his hair.

She was saying something and he was nodding against her, and all traces of that bright and fierce fear in her body had disappeared.

Nikki looked down to the computer, her eyes trained on the images.

There were no lesions. That much was visible. But that meant the mystery continued.


	5. Chapter 5

**Learn to Have Been**

* * *

_February 2015_

Kate Beckett takes in the narrow strip of grey on the computer screen, but it gives up no clues. She's watched this spool of traffic cam footage for months now, but only today does she actually know what she might be looking for.

Black Mercedes.

She's been at this for hours, the precinct is dark, she doesn't want to go home.

There has to be something here.

When she first combed the county for video footage - any at all, any tract of that road - she'd gotten pretty much nothing. Maybe she was a ballbuster like they said, but she needed eyes on the scene and there was just nothing.

Castle flinched at a black Mercedes. So Kate is taking that like the remnants of a memory and she's running with it. What else does she have?

She's got eyes now, and she hopes she knows what she's looking for. She wants to find a black Mercedes on the road, pin it down, see if she can get the driver buying gas or stopping at a red light or paying a toll. There has to be something. Has to. She refuses to think that her partner could be snatched from her, that her almost-wedding could be transformed into one of the worst days of her life, and all without a trace.

Kate presses two fingers to her mouth, stares at the video on the computer screen, the lonely stretch of crossroads where the camera flashes every time the red light changes.

Even when no one has run the light, the video remains. It didn't get cleared from the state's history because Kate pounced on it that very day of the accident. She's gone through approximately five hundred and eighty hours worth of traffic footage - bridges, overpasses, red light runners, and convenience stores up and down that road.

And now five more hours to add to her grand total, and she has nothing.

The last frame of the video runs out and there hasn't been a single black Mercedes. All it means is that the driver hit it cleanly, didn't get stopped at this light, that's all it means. Next, she'll check the uninterrupted footage at the toll post for a black Mercedes.

Campbell said Castle flinched at a black Mercedes, cut them off on the road.

Wait. Is it the _same_ Mercedes? Is it the same? Not just a memory of the accident, but _recognition_?

Her phone rings and she startles, realizes the third shift has been tiptoeing around her since they came on. It's Castle calling, and she hesitates only a second before answering.

"Yeah?" she winces.

"Kate?"

"I got caught up at work," she explains. "It'll take me a little-"

"Oh, I thought - I must have it wrong."

She swallows, buries her fingers in her hair, tugs at her scalp. "Have it wrong? What, Rick?"

"No, I thought we were doing dinner?"

"Oh, no," she sighs. "We - we said that. You remembered right."

_He_ remembered right, and yet here she is hunched over her computer screen, staring at video footage from nine months ago, when she should be having dinner with her husband who is alive.

Except what she really wants to do right now is cull traffic cams from _June_ instead of May, look for the black Mercedes that cut off Campbell in his truck after picking up that all-important hitchhiker. (What if it's the same Mercedes? What if it's the _same Mercedes_?) What she wants to do is run down the idea she's suddenly had that their lead isn't so much on that accident in May on the day she was supposed to have gotten married, but the lead is actually the day she was given him back.

"Kate? I remembered right?"

"I'll - be right there. I'm on my way," she promises. Because she was given him back; she was given him back, and that is what is most important. "Rick?"

"Oh-okay," he stutters. "I think I burned the chicken. I'm sorry."

He's sorry. "Castle-"

"I mean. Sorry in a really specific way - and not because I'm brain damaged - but because it reeks in here now, and I think I fell asleep on the couch for a couple hours and now the chicken is burned."

She sits stunned at her computer, not sure she heard any of that right, but it's just par for the course lately.

"Kate? I was trying to make a joke. It is burned, it does stink. But-"

"No, I got it," she croaks.

"Oh," he sighs. "Just not funny. Okay. Um. It's late, and I'll probably be asleep when you get home, Kate, so if there's work you need do, you should stay."

"No, I'm coming home," she rasps, swallowing down the thick urge to cry. "I'm coming home, and - please don't go to bed yet?"

"Oh."

"Rick?" She lifts her head, blinks hard as she logs out of her computer, listening intently on the line to hear him, hear the things he won't say as well as the things he will. Who is she kidding? He says everything now, and it's always sweet and kind. "Unless you're too tired-"

"I'll stay up. I can stay up. I'll see you - soon?"

"Yes," she says, already getting to her feet, thumbing off her monitor. "I'm leaving right now. I love you."

"I love you too," he answers back, sounding really pleased, and that's good.

Kate ends the call and jerks her coat from the back of her chair, hustling to get it on as she heads through the bullpen for the elevator. Her heart is skipping funny in her chest and she has to remind herself that they've worked and worked, she can't ruin it now, not like this, for _this_, for him, when it's for him she's doing it.

Her thoughts are going round and round, and she taps her foot in the elevator, anxious not to mess things up. Dinner.

She forgot because it was an offhand remark from him this morning, but chicken? He was trying to make something, and his short-term memory has been so scattered that she's often come home to find food prepared in stages, abandoned when he forgot.

A whole dinner, burned only because he fell asleep waiting on her. The first time he gets it right and she ruins it.

She's going to fix it. She will fix this.

In the garage, Kate hurries to her police-issue car, thumbs the key fob for the doors to unlock. But a little red light on her key flares up and nothing else happens. The doors are still locked.

She knows better, but her mind goes absolutely blank. She tries the key fob again, irrationally angry because the chip in the key must be dead and those are so expensive to replace and the powers-that-be have sent memos around about taking that kind of thing out of their pay. Kate sighs and pushes they key into the lock and opens it manually, the movement unpracticed. She's never unlocked her car with the key like this. Never had to; she's always used the key fob.

Kate slides behind the wheel and pushes the key into the ignition and turns it.

But there's nothing. Her car is dead.

Her car is-

Kate panics. She scrambles fast and hard out of the car, smacking her knee on the steering wheel, leaving the door hanging wide open as she gets away, far away, her hand going to her gun, braced for the blast.

It takes a moment of fear-laced adrenaline before she breathes, before she blinks and assesses the situation. It's not a bomb, it's just that her battery has died. Her battery has died.

But this is the car that the CIA souped up for her after it was dunked, this is the car that's been outfitted and detailed to even Castle's lavish standards. The battery should be good for three more years, at least. Shit. She doesn't have time for this.

Kate rubs both hands down her face and moves back to the car, but a clench in her gut makes her wait. Makes her stop and hesitate.

Last time... last time, that bastard came right into the precinct and out again. Last time no one saw him, even the security video was tampered with. Last time...

Kate shifts on her feet, steps back again.

Chicken, burned, but Rick tried. He tried and he remembered dinner, and she didn't and now her car won't start and she doesn't want to do what has to be done next. If it's a bomb, then it's bomb squad and she won't be home tonight and it's the station on lockdown and-

_Proof._

It's proof and a lead. It's better than a maybe black Mercedes.

But it's just the damn battery. The battery died and now she's got to pop the hood and have someone jump the car and probably take it to the pool mechanic and sign the requisition forms and it's a huge hassle, the whole thing, and she should probably go back upstairs and get that started right now.

Kate retreats farther into the garage, watching the exits, pulls her phone out of her pocket. She's calling her husband before she realizes what she's doing and she holds her breath until he answers.

"Hey."

"Hey," she murmurs, not willing to let her voice carry in the garage. "I have a situation here, Castle." Why did she call Castle? What can Castle do to help?

"Oh."

"Not like that. It's my car. Won't start."

"Leave it in the garage; it'll be safe there. Take the - uh - the..."

"I know, but I can't do that." The subway. Did he forget the line? Probably. Best to move past it, don't comment. "I've got to do the paperwork on it."

"Is this - are you lying?"

"Rick."

"It just sounds really fake. Like an excuse."

"Castle," she growls. "My car won't start - the battery is dead. I'm going to need it tomorrow at work - for work - so I've got to requisition the mechanic, a new battery. It could be the starter, or even a blown fuse, but I can't-"

"Okay. All right. Car's broken. I get it. Do your paperwork then, Kate. It's fine."

He hangs up on her. Kate stares at the blank and empty parking garage, grits her teeth until her jaw aches. She carefully lowers the phone, slides it into her back pocket.

Her hand is shaking.

She breathes out, tilts her head back as her eyes close.

She really doesn't need this tonight. She doesn't need this - one more thing broken, one more responsibility. The traffic cams yield nothing, dinner is burned, and now-

She presses her lips together and calls Esposito. He knows what she should look for, wires or connections. Or - it's probably just a stupid battery, and this is all for nothing.

But Kate doesn't leave the car for someone else to bump into it, she baby-sits it, ear pressed to her phone until Esposito picks up.

"Yo, you got something?"

"I don't know what I got, Espo. I'm down in the garage and my car won't start. Nothing - no dashboard lights, no engine-"

"All right. Okay, the battery dead? Get Hastings - she's got jumper cables-"

"No, I - it might be something else."

"All right," he says slowly. She can tell he's somewhere loud and trying to get somewhere quiet, that he's a little put out with her for calling when this seems like a straight up problem that she can handle alone.

She always handles things; she's Detective Kate Beckett.

"Gotta check the battery first, Beckett. That's what any mechanic would do. Then if it doesn't start, or it smokes, the engine might be blocked. But you can't get to that without taking off the wheel and cranking it, and you know 1PP doesn't like us working on the cars ourselves. Gotta fill out the paperwork."

"Yeah, except this is something - might be something else," she says. "I don't think it's a good idea to touch the car, Espo."

"Not a good-"

He stops and she hears the startlingly clear silence on the other end of the line.

"Back away from the car," he says urgently. "Where-"

"Parking garage. Below the precinct."

"Stay near the stairwell, Beckett. Get in the doorway where you can still see the car, you hear me? I'm on my way. But you have to call-"

"All right," she gives in. "I know. I'll call the bomb squad. I'll call."

Kate shifts forward, already hanging up as she heads for the stairwell.

The chicken is already burned, right? Nothing for it now.


	6. Chapter 6

**Learn to Have Been**

* * *

_July 2014_

**X**

It was five weeks after her son had been delivered safely to them when Martha Rodgers came down the stairs of the loft and happened upon a conversation that made her heart ache.

She hadn't been quiet, of course; she'd come clicking in her heels with a cloud of perfume and the thoughts on her mind also on her lips, but Richard and Katherine had been half in the study and half in the living room and they didn't hear her at first. They kept right on fighting.

"Let's just get married, right now. Forget all of this." Kate was pleading from the office; Martha only saw her son's face, the wash of panic flattening out to nothing.

Before Martha could interrupt, Rick said something, too quiet for her to hear, but loud enough for Kate.

"But _why_? Why won't you?" Katherine, furious and intent, came out of the study and stalked towards Richard. Martha rushed in because this was not something to be swept under the rug, not after all this, and she had to let her presence be known.

As always, Martha threw off the tragedy and donned the comedy instead, calling out loudly to them both, gathering her son and his fiancee to her and hugging them. "Darlings, you should. How wonderful would that be? Richard, listen to your mother. Don't let this - this event - postpone your plans. Life is short, and we all know it."

Richard's face was that careful neutral that still made Martha's words falter; she hated that face. This was not her son, she couldn't help thinking, this wasn't the man who wore his heart on his sleeve and could be a little immature in his self-centeredness (all her fault, she knew; she'd been his example) but who was, at the core, so compassionate towards others.

He was turning his head away from her, from them both, and Kate's quietness in the face of Richard's balk sounded a worrisome note in the air.

"Darling, what's wrong?" she said, letting the anxiety color her voice to knock Richard out of himself. And it did the trick, as it always did, always had, thank goodness, so that her son turned back to her and put on a smile.

"No, nothing. Nothing's wrong. I'm - grateful to be here. You're right; life is short, Mother."

"Then marry the girl."

Kate murmured something in resistance, her embarrassment acute enough to bring her into the conversation finally. "Martha. If he doesn't - it'll come. In time. It doesn't have to be today."

"But it will happen," Castle gave, his eyes flying to hers with such pleading that it turned Martha's heart funny. And it must have done the same to Kate, because she caught his hand in hers and squeezed it, stepping close.

"Of course, it will. Of course," she said, nodding and agreeing.

"You two should really talk about these things, you know," Martha huffed. They really should; she didn't like this, the way they kept circling the elephant in the room.

They were supposed to have been married. And now?

Martha had been afraid it was on Kate's side, not knowing how to adjust to Richard's... peculiarities of personality. Martha had been counseling herself to leave it be, give Katherine space, but the same did not go for her son.

"Darling, you and I-" she started, intending to sit him down for some motherly advice.

But he interrupted her with a step back, a grimace on his face that was then gone again. He didn't stumble - at least there was that; his walking was more coordinated, he was even undaunted on the stairs. It would come back. It would all come back in time.

"I'm going to rest," Richard said. "Physical therapy wore me out. An hour or so." He didn't even bother to check that it was okay with her; he turned to Kate instead and his pleading was all non-verbal.

And for things Martha didn't know about, couldn't fathom, but the look that passed between them said that there had been so much more to that conversation. More hurt than Martha knew.

"Then go," Kate said, and Martha had the feeling it was the wrong thing to say.

But Richard shuffled away from them, down the hallway towards the master bedroom, his head hanging with his exhaustion.

"My dear," Martha said softly. "Katherine."

Kate finally looked at her, teeth chewing her bottom lip.

"It's only a small bump in the road," Martha promised. "You'll get there."

**X**

"He looked like a little boy, so scared." Kate blew out a breath and looked away. "Of a _wedding_."

Lanie pressed the drink into her chest and shook her head. "What did you expect, Kate? It's been traumatic for him. He's still adjusting."

"But he's just not - not him," Kate whispered, closing her eyes. Lanie was surprised to see the tears squeeze out of her eyes; this was the end of the story, the happily-ever-after. At least to Lanie's thinking. Castle was alive, against all odds, a fairy tale ending.

"Feel free to tell me shut up, but... What do a few personality quirks really matter?"

Kate let out a breath and opened her eyes. She had a glass of scotch as well, but she wasn't drinking. Just nursing it, staring into her glass on their rare night off. Kate looked like she already wanted to leave, go back home, but she answered. "It's not personality quirks, Lanie. It's - his whole bearing. He's just so - he's _nice_."

Lanie lifted an eyebrow. "Nice. Hell, Beckett, ain't nothing wrong with nice."

"No, I know. I know." She said it like she was trying to convince herself.

"You're the one who told me he was an immature, egotistical, and self-centered jackass. You remember that? And that was _after_ you two had gotten together. A little _nice_-"

"I'm not saying he's - you're right. I know. And I know Castle's - um - foibles. He is those things, but he's also - he's not this."

Lanie sighed and laid her tumbler on the coffee table, drew her knees up into the couch. They had to face this head on or it was gonna fester. She knew Kate. "Honey-"

"I don't even know if we..."

"That's not true," Lanie said firmly. "Don't even think it. You love him, and he loves you - despite being _brain damaged_, Kate. He's had a traumatic-"

"I _know_. I know. I know." Kate shook her head and pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. "I know."

"What did the neuro say about it?"

Kate lifted her head, gathering herself again, nodding now as she went back to the bullet point list of what they knew. Always worked with Beckett; straightened her out, the facts at hand. "Well, for one, there's no lesion. Which is good; it is. I know. It means - at least they're saying that the possibility for full recovery is there. All the pathways are intact."

Lanie hummed. "There you go. That's good news."

"A full physical recovery anyway."

Lanie sighed. "He's not _that_ brain damaged, Beckett. I talked to him. He's sometimes a little unsteady on his feet, but as you said, no lesions means he'll get that back."

Kate nodded, but she'd brought her hand to her mouth, was staring into space. She suddenly shook it off. "What about the forensics?"

Lanie offered a tentative hand to her friend, laid it on Kate's knee. "I told you. That blood splatter on his scrub-"

"Did you get a match?" Kate said, jerking upright.

Lanie winced. "No, honey. No possibility for a match. It's too degraded to know much other than the fact that it's male."

"So that's a dead end." Kate scraped her hand through her hair and closed her eyes again, but Lanie had already seen it, that flicker of calculation on her friend's face. Putting things together.

"No, not-uh," Lanie said, sitting up. "Go back. What was that?"

Kate swiveled her head to Lanie, blinked once.

"Kate Beckett. You're not getting out of this. What do you know? I see it on your face."

Kate bit her bottom lip and shifted her eyes to Lanie, but she could see that her friend wanted to tell. Needed to.

"Come on, Kate. You tell me what's going on. Tell me what you know."

Kate put her elbows on her knees and finally looked at Lanie. "Do you remember - the plastic surgeon? The woman who-"

"Left you guys that message in a ballpoint-pen? Kate, you said that was-"

"Tyson's girlfriend," Kate grit out. She shook her head, pressed her hands to her face again. "Or something. I don't know. It's twisted."

"But you're saying - are you saying that this woman came back for Castle?"

Kate lifted her head; she looked wrecked. It was the first time Lanie had ever seen her so completely out of control.

"Kate, honey, no. It can't be a woman. The blood splatter - we know it's male."

Kate's face twisted; she made a noise that she choked off with a shake of her head. "Not the girlfriend but - Tyson. I think it's Tyson," she whispered. "He's the one who kidnapped Castle."

Lanie stared at her for heartbeat, disbelieving, and then she schooled her features. "Tyson is dead. You shot him, point blank, and he fell off a bridge into that nasty water. Jerry Tyson has not come back for your boy."

Kate let out a breath, her eyes cutting to Lanie and then away. She looked uncertain, doubtful. She looked like she hadn't really been sleeping.

"Kate, honey, I know you're desperate for leads. But seeing things that aren't there-"

"No, I'm-"

"Listen to me. Right now, Kate, you need to focus on getting Castle better. Don't you think? That man needs to heal."

Kate bit her lip. "You're right," she breathed. "No, you're exactly right. This is about Castle."


	7. Chapter 7

**Learn to Have Been**

* * *

_February 2015_

He's dreaming. Castle knows he's dreaming because the face before him is twisted and rubbed out like a reflection in a carnival mirror. The voice that goes along with it is disturbingly distorted, synthesized until it's not even human, and each word touches Castle's mind like a touch, a finger scraping the chalkboard of his senses.

_Tell me about her._

It's not right. This isn't right. He needs to get out of here.

_Tell me._

No. He has to keep it closed, like doors. Keep the doors shut on all of it, keep it locked away, even from himself so the distorted thing won't get in.

_He's useless. He's no good like this._

He has to keep it closed. If he can just keep it closed. It's vital. It's life or death. He has to keep it locked down, like Kate does, like she's so good at, just keep it so tight and hard and compact in him so that no one can ever reach it.

_Tell me. Tell me why it's so important._

Kate would know why. Kate understands why. He can't let it in, can't let it know, it would kill everything he loves, destroy it all. Kate knows. If she was here-

Castle yells, jerking awake at a touch. He brings up both fists, yanked from a nightmare into darkness, unfamiliarity, his body rigid and his heart racing.

"Hey, it's okay, it's okay, babe, it's just me. Castle, hush-"

"Kate," he groans, sinking back into the couch. His heart is thrashing in his chest; sweat clings to his palms, the back of his neck. The distorted thing is close, is near; he can't let it in.

He has to close his eyes.

Kate sinks down beside him, one hand on his thigh and one on his back, rubbing. "You okay? It's late, babe. What are you doing out here?" Soothing, slow circles, around and around. The distorted thing fades.

He opens his eyes, so relieved to see that it's only Kate that he nearly cries.

Instead he clears his throat. "Yeah, fell asleep. Waiting for you." He tries to pull himself together, entirely too aware of the seething terror that lies in wait for him below the surface of dreams. He takes a swift look at the clock on the oven and grimaces. "Kate. It's four in the morning. What the hell?"

She actually smiles; relief pours across her face and he gets that bitter taste in his mouth at knowing he's done something he _used_ to do, said something 'right' for once. Not been _nice_.

He used to be a real asshole. Funny, because he doesn't remember himself as an asshole; he just remembers being happy-go-lucky, easy-going, life of the party. But every time Kate tries to explain the missing pieces, asshole is what comes to mind.

She's even chuckling a little at his confusion.

Castle rubs a hand down his face, discombobulated - and defensive enough that he hears himself lashing out at her again. "That's funny to you? I don't think it's so great that a 'battery' took nearly eight hours to-"

"No," she breathes, shaking her head. She's smiling so wide at him, her eyes bright. "No, I thought it was a bomb, but it's not."

"A _bomb_? Kate-"

"It wasn't, it wasn't," she says, smiling and radiant. She wraps her arms around him and slides a thigh over his knees, settles into his lap still in her work clothes and heeled boots. She cups his face in her hands and kisses him softly, touches of her mouth to his, her knees tightening at his waist.

Castle groans, that darkness in him still somewhere under the surface, like her assault has shades of memory he doesn't want to reach for, but he lifts his hands to her hips and grips her thighs hard enough to bruise.

She moans, a throaty sound that echoes in his chest. Her body rocks against his and he grips her tighter, thumbs torquing into her inside thighs. She gasps. "Yes, Castle - like that."

Bruises? She wants him to _bruise_ her? Is that what she wants from him - the angry retorts at four in the morning and accusations of lying and holding her so tightly he mars her flesh because he can't bear to be dragged back down into nightmares?

"Castle," she groans. "Please. Please, I thought he'd caught up to me but it was just a dead battery; he didn't. You're alive, I'm alive, and it was a hell of a lot of paperwork and a big damn embarrassment and I just want to forget it was - I want you, I just want-"

He growls and bands an arm around her back, drags her down against him, attacking her throat with his teeth and sucking hard on her skin to mark her. She wants rough, she wants him to be someone he's not - someone he _used_ to be - then fine. Fine.

He just wants her.

He wants it to be normal again.

* * *

There's a mock-up of a cartoon bomb sitting on her desk chair when she gets in to work the next morning. Like something Wile E. Coyote would buy from the Acme company to thwart the Road Runner but end up having it explode in his own face instead.

Kate gives a little half-bow, picks up the cardboard cut-out, chucks it in the trash to the sound of the bullpen's light laughter.

So she called the bomb squad for a dead battery.

Better safe than sorry.

In that moment, standing in the parking garage and knowing the complicated and involved schemes that Jerry Tyson has pulled before, she had no trouble believing a bomb was in her car.

Now she wonders if she's a little crazy. There is absolutely no evidence for Jerry Tyson - nothing. And Tyson liked them to know; he wanted to gloat about it. Even Nieman was the same during that case, wanting to smirk in their faces.

Kate has no evidence and maybe this is all a big mistake. Maybe she's running hard in the wrong direction.

She sits down at her desk chair and doesn't let the bullpen see it though. _Never let them see you sweat._ Royce used to say that when they went out on 911 calls.

She has a black Mercedes, no plates, no witness ID, no forensics in her husband's car, nothing.

Ryan and Esposito come rolling over, Ryan having to catch the edge of her desk to keep from rolling past. He grins widely at her and she knows he's not the one who put the cartoon in her chair; he looks eager as a puppy and ready to do whatever she says.

Esposito is even giving her a great big smile. But in the back of their gazes is the swamping pity they had all May and June when Castle was missing.

She sets her teeth against it, gestures to her computer screen instead. "Did you guys start looking at the traffic cams?"

"Yeah, but you said during the time that Castle was found - not during his accident? Did we hear you wrong - what can you possibly hope to find?"

She folds her hands in her lap and tries to keep the crazy from showing. This feels insane. She needs to present her evidence, the timeline, lay it out neatly. "I think someone came after Castle that day - maybe he escaped somehow, maybe they dropped him off? But his kidnapper was on the road that day and cut off Campbell as he was driving."

She gets two blank stares.

Kate breathes out. "Okay, first. The blood splatter on the bottom of his scrubs was never identified. But we know it's not Castle's."

"You don't know that. Lanie said it was too degraded to match with any certainty. We only know that's it male," Esposito says. He's never tried to sugarcoat things. He's her reality check and it's not sounding good so far.

She tries again. "Right. Male but not necessarily Castle's blood. Castle wasn't even bleeding when he was found. In fact, nothing was wrong with him - no scratches, no broken bones, just some - the marks on his neck."

Ligature marks, Kate thought then - still thinks? - but Lanie couldn't say that either. None of Tyson's rope fibers were left in the contusions, and the doc in the emergency department suggested the seatbelt might have done it.

Ryan shifts his gaze to Esposito. He doesn't look eager about this theory. "Yeah, okay, but..."

"Hear me out," she says, holding up a hand. "The blood wasn't Castle's so it stands to reason that it's someone else's who was there with him - his kidnapper's."

Ryan's face has gone from hopeful to hesitant, just like that.

But Kate can't stop now. It's nearly February and she just got the first lead they've had - even if it's not solid, even if it feels like grasping at straws. "Castle was - never supposed to be found," she says. "They weren't going to let him go."

"They?" Esposito says cautiously.

"I know I said it was Kelly Nieman, fulfilling some kind of vengeance against us for killing Tyson, but now-"

"No," Espo cuts in. "No. Beckett. Don't jump off that bridge."

"It makes sense. The blood is male, so it can't be Nieman's. And Castle has always thought Tyson didn't die that night-"

"No," Espo growls, hulking in close as if to block her crazy from the rest of the bullpen. She knows it's showing, but she can't help it. "Beckett, listen to yourself."

"Something happened - a struggle maybe, a fight, something. Castle escaped-"

"_Escaped_? In that condition?"

"Castle escaped and they came looking for him. I've talked to Campbell a hundred times. But when I took him out to the road, it jogged his memory. He said a black Mercedes cut him off-"

"It's the Hamptons, Beckett. There are a lot of black Mercedes."

She stares up at Esposito, then addresses her appeal to Ryan. "It's all I got, guys. If we can find that Mercedes..."

"And what? Arrest the twenty year old hotel heiress who drives it like the idiot she is?" Esposito snorts.

"Fine. Say it is some Paris Hilton. Okay. Then at least that's one thing I can mark off my list. I've got nothing else up there, Javi. Nothing."

Esposito leans back in the chair, his jaw working, but it's Ryan who leans in and nods. "You got it, boss. If the black Mercedes is there, we'll find it. We'll run it down."

"Thank you," she sighs. "Ryan, I-"

He holds up a hand. "But when it _is_ Paris Hilton, I'm getting an autograph."

"For Paris _Hilton_?" Esposito growls, but her boys are already rolling their chairs back to their desks, bickering between each other over which celebrities are cool to idolize and which aren't.

Kate faces her caseload and gets to work, but she can feel the crazy in her wanting out.

This is all crazy. None of this makes sense.


	8. Chapter 8

**Learn to Have Been**

* * *

_July 2014_

**X**

Alexis shouldn't have sat down on top of the stairs. She shouldn't have pulled her feet up on the step to make herself smaller, shouldn't have tilted her head against the railing and held her breath so she could hear them better.

She should have let her father know she was here.

But she'd never heard Kate like this before.

So she had made herself small as she used to do when she was little and Meredith was being impossible, and she had listened.

She was listening.

It was the stairs where lessons had been taught. At ten years old, Alexis had learned that money didn't grow on trees. It had been shocking in its simplicity, in its raw real-ness, and the stairs had been the place where she'd overheard the whole story - poured out to her father by her best friend's mother - that Paige's dad had left them and they were going to lose the apartment and she couldn't even afford the lawyer.

And then other things had happened, which she hadn't understood, and the woman had left crying and apologizing and saying _can we pretend this never happened?__  
_

Paige and her mom and little sister had been forced to move out, and then no more Marlowe Prep, and then Paige couldn't go bowling with them or get ice cream because she never had the money and she'd been angry whenever Alexis tried to let her borrow some, and it had gotten really ugly.

That had caused Alexis to worry about her own father because he was already a single parent, because she was already down to the last one who wanted her, and she'd had nightmares. So then her father had taken her into his study and shown her the check Black Pawn had sent for his latest contract. _And that's just one, pumpkin. Do you want to count how many your dad's written so far?_

That had been the day she'd learned that money did - actually - grow on trees. For her it did. Because her father was a best-selling novelist and every time a book of his was published, type and glue and a slick dust jacket, it was paper. It was paper and that was where the money came from and so yes, actually, money in her family did grow on trees.

And, shamefully, it hadn't been until she was thirteen and watching her father's soul drain away under the influence of his publisher and second wife that Alexis had realized that there was a price to be paid. Her father kept buying her things and putting her through an expensive private school and getting her a new laptop and phone and ipod and whatever she so much as squealed over, and it had all had a price.

It wasn't that _money_ didn't grow on trees - it was happiness. Contentment. Joy and peace and all the holiday themes, those things were precious and rare and they couldn't be bought. Not by a thousand best-sellers or a hundred six-figure book deals; it was her father she loved and he'd been unhappy.

Alexis had been fourteen when her father fell into his second divorce, and it had been a relief and a failure both, and she'd wanted to help but she had never known how.

Beckett had helped. Beckett was all those things that didn't grow on trees, and so Alexis Castle was sitting on the top step of the staircase in the loft and she was listening in on their fight just as she'd listened to Gina's screaming rages and bitter under-the-breaths until that had been over, finally, and done.

Alexis wasn't ashamed of it, no matter that she wasn't fourteen any more. This was how she found out things, this was the only way sometimes to get the truth. These staircase stalkings, haunting the top step where the landing hid her from sight. She had always gotten more information in this position.

And she knew what her father was and what he wasn't any more, and she was going to find a way to protect his hard-won, rare, precious contentment. Even if it was from himself.

Her dad might not have forgotten his family or the precinct or Kate or herself, but clearly he'd forgotten something. Forgotten how to _ache_. When he'd divorced Gina, there'd been no ache any more, no hint of feeling, and he'd been numb to all of it.

Beckett had woken him up, a sharp shot to his nervous system, a jolt of electricity to the heart. And the years since, confusing and frustrating and dangerous as they were, her father had needed them. Needed to be more than a best-selling popular fiction writer, maybe even more than just her father. Alexis was okay with that; she'd found a way to reconcile herself to his newfound _mission_ in life: justice and Kate Beckett.

Alexis knew that while her dad's memory was mostly intact, he had forgotten what it was to ache. He'd forgotten what pining was, what loving someone so much you'd do anything for them felt like.

He'd been the one to tell her to take a risk on love, and he'd been right about it. But this man with her father's voice and her dad's memories and Richard Castle's signature were _not_ the same as the man who risked crazy things for love.

"Kate, will you just let it go?" he said from the kitchen. The sound traveled so well to her spot. _Let it go_ had never been her father's m.o.

Kate, of course, didn't let it go. "It's been nearly two months," she said. She sounded calm, but it was a deadly calm. "Seven weeks, Rick."

"I'm still not strong enough. I want to stand up with you, not have to sit halfway through the ceremony." There was no sardonic note to his voice. He wasn't being sarcastic; he was being _honest._

Alexis could practically see the twist of his mouth as he might have said something like that before, but that wasn't how he'd said it now. He never said anything with that sly cleverness any more, never came out with those self-satisfied retorts.

Kate murmured something, and then said clearly, "You're standing right now. We've been having this argument for the last twenty minutes, and you've been standing the whole time."

"And I'm exhausted," he insisted. There was a little bit of melodrama in it, and that at least sounded like her father. "Can you just let it go for now? Please?"

"No." Alexis heard movement and then maybe her father was making a point by settling heavily into one of the chairs at the bar, but Kate snorted. "Just explain the real reason. I'm a big girl, Castle. I can take it."

"Kate."

"I know you love me. It's impossible for you to be subtle. You keep saying you want to be over this, you want to forget it ever happened and go on with our lives. But you won't-"

"Maybe it's just not our time. You ever think of that? After all this - just not our time."

"We make our own time. We make it. Do you remember reassuring me? How you had to convince _me_ that this was right no matter what the universe seemed to be telling us."

"Maybe we should have listened to the universe."

There was silence, and Alexis was holding her breath, but her heart was beating too hard against her ribs so that she thought the sound carried down to them.

Her father couldn't possibly mean that how he'd said it.

When he spoke again, the apology in his tone made it hurt all the more. "Maybe, Kate, I shouldn't have to convince you. And you shouldn't have to convince me."

She heard Kate's sharp breath and the noisy sounds of two people staring at each other in shame and disbelief and hurt and anger. It was loud. It was so loud, all the things rushing in the silence like that.

And then heels clicked through the living room and Alexis was too late to duck, because Kate was at the front door and flipping the lock, and she saw Alexis there.

Kate saw her at the top of the stairs. But her face only shuttered and she walked out the door.

But Alexis saw that at least she had her keys.

Alexis stood from her hiding spot at the top of the stairs, but she didn't know what she could possible say to fix things. She had been the one to see her father suffering for Kate, pining for Kate, aching for Kate, and if he couldn't remember it, _feel_ it, then Alexis didn't know what happened next.

But Kate still had her keys. Kate was coming back.

**X**

Sara El-Masri sat awkwardly on the edge of her friend's bed and watched Alexis pace the floor in front of her. She really wished Alexis would move back to the dorms, or at least move into Sara's apartment - it was big enough, and definitely secure - because this 'staying at home' crap put a serious damper on fun. But she was here to support Alexis, and so she let the girl rant, half-listening because she was supposed to.

And then her eyes caught the shadow at the door.

"Hey, Alexis, shhh, stop, stop," she hissed.

Yes, she was jumpy and paranoid, but a kidnapping could do that to you. And she really had seen someone at her friend's bedroom door. Alexis spun around and marched towards the door and yanked it open with more guts than Sara had anymore.

It was the grandmother.

"Gram!"

"Oh, darling, Alexis, I didn't want to interrupt. But I couldn't help overhearing your impressive tirade."

Sara sat up a little straighter, arched a cool eyebrow. "Helps that you were crouched at the door, listening in."

Alexis shot her a horrified look but the older woman laughed and waved it off. "You are adorable, darling. Listen, Alexis, I know that you're upset about your father. It was actually Kate's idea that I talk to you-"

"Was it Kate's idea that you snoop?" Sara shot back. Seriously, Alexis needed to get out of here.

Martha looked less like she found her delightful, but that was fine. Sara had been hearing it for weeks now, about this whole crazy family drama, and she'd even been approached by reporters for her _story_. But she'd been keeping their secrets and she'd been screwed by the press before, so she wasn't interested.

Plus she was paranoid. Kidnapping was a bitch.

She should probably leave. She wasn't up for family drama. "Alexis, I should go-"

"No, please stay," Alexis begged. "It's - awkward down there with just us."

"Kate has made dinner," Martha said. "And you are welcome to join."

"Dad didn't make dinner?" Alexis asked, but she looked like she knew the answer already.

"No, darling. You know he can't-"

"I know," she said quietly. She bit her bottom lip as she turned her face away and if Alexis hadn't been the _one_ person who had gotten Sara through their kidnapping two years ago, she'd have rolled her eyes and walked out.

But Alexis had been calm under pressure, the one who hadn't succumbed to PTSD and spent an hour a day for six weeks at a therapist's office. Alexis had been the one to fight back, make a plan.

She'd been a friend. She was still her friend.

"I'll stay," Sara sighed.

Alexis lifted a grateful smile and reached out, took her hand with a squeeze. Martha did the same, all of them squeezing and silently being grateful, and seriously, what was with the drama of this family?

Sara liked Detective Beckett though. She was steady and quiet and didn't do this kind of thing - the wide, soulful blue eyes and the innocent routine.

And it had sounded like Kate had just gotten socked hard by a fight she'd had with Mr Castle, so maybe she wanted to force out a kind of normal family dinner. Sara didn't mind going along with that. Mr Castle was sweet and kinda funny sometimes, so it wouldn't even be that awkward for her. Everyone would be trying, right?

As they trouped down the steps and came into the living room, Sara was greeted by Alexis's father, a short smile that almost reached his eyes as he said he was so glad she could join them. She knew he remembered - the kidnapping and the stories after - and she tried to set them all at ease from the start.

"You don't have to worry, Mr Castle, Detective Beckett. I still see a therapist. She helps a lot. Hardly any nightmares." It was her usual opening. People wanted to know.

"Oh. Well. That's good," he said back, looking like he meant it.

And then because she was like that, because she'd been a spoiled-rich princess to a Middle Eastern businessman and she was used to saying whatever she felt like and having people do what she told them to, she gave them her own advice. "Maybe you should see a therapist too. Might help all this... drama."

It was Mr Castle who laughed first, and it broke open his face and made his eyes crinkle at the corners, and then he turned and shared it with Kate Beckett, and it made that woman's whole entire being almost radiant with relief.

"We're already on that," Mr. Castle said. "But thanks."

**X**

When Chief Brady got the call from Detective Beckett, he wasn't surprised. He'd been expecting it; so far, she had called once a week since they'd picked up her partner on the side of the road.

He agreed to meet her halfway - it was his idea, because he was sure she wanted to stick close - and when he pulled his police cruiser up to the diner just off the interstate, she was already there waiting for him.

"Detective Beckett," he said easily, smiling at her. He held out his hand and she shook, still that firm grip that said she would take care of business. "How can I help?"

She scraped that hand through her hair and held it back off her face. He saw her chest expand with the long breath in, and she turned her head away. They were still in the parking lot of the diner, and while Brady had assumed she would want to do this quickly, he thought now that maybe she needed time to talk. Decompress.

"Let's go inside, Detective. I'll buy you some coffee."

She dropped her hand; she looked like she was going to refuse. But then her eyes turned back to him and she gave a tired smile. "Thanks, Chief. I'd - coffee would be nice."

He led the way to the diner, threading between a truck and a Saab parked too closely together, and then inside the restaurant. Beckett went immediately for the stools at the lunch counter and Brady followed her, not questioning.

Usually she called him and asked if there were any updates and he said no and she hung up. But he had the sense on the phone this time that she had been pushed beyond her limit, and so he'd agreed to meeting her.

Not like he wouldn't have met her anyway. If she'd asked to meet with him face-to-face during any of those other conversations, he would have headed straight to his car.

They sat side by side until they'd been served bad coffee, and then Chief Brady figured he'd have to be the one to get this underway.

"What did you want to talk about, Detective?"

She gave a noise that sounded a little hopeless and shook her head. "You have nothing new? Nothing at all?"

"I'd have called," he reminded her.

She scraped that hand through her hair again, but this time she pressed her forehead into the heel of her hand and closed her eyes. "I've got nothing," she whispered.

The case had stalled out, she meant. Brady would normally lay a hand on a shoulder, try to comfort, but she didn't look open to that. "Well, you've got him."

She straightened up, eyebrows furrowed now, and he saw that had been the wrong thing to say. Too moralistic maybe, too judgmental of him. He didn't know how to fix it, so he rushed on with information.

"I've had my guys out asking at convenience stores, diners like this one, places along the interstate where someone might have seen anything. But I'm juggling overtime - which we can't afford to pay - and a new union president, plus a couple of cases that landed in my lap recently, and on top of it, Detective, the vacationers are in and out. You know that."

"The vacationers are in and out?" she echoed.

"The people here now weren't here in May when this happened. The accident might have been witnessed, the kidnapping, but those witnesses are probably back home in Ohio or North Carolina or wherever they live year-round. We're tracking them down, one by one, as best we can, making phone calls to their homes."

"Vacationers," she said. Detective Beckett clasped her fingers around the mug and sipped at her coffee, winced at the taste. "I've brought you all the way for nothing. I'm sorry."

"Not all the way - only halfway," he said weakly.

She shook her head, turned to look at him. "I'm desperate for leads. For anything. But - you're right. You're doing what you can - you're even thinking of things I hadn't. And now you've taken time away from all that to meet me. For nothing."

"It's okay," he said. "I owe you both. You helped me, so I'm helping you. And I _like_ you both. There's that too."

She did smile then, a faint thing, soon gone. He didn't ask how she and Richard Castle were doing, how their personal relationship was faring. They were supposed to have been married, and Chief Brady was smart enough to know that could be a sensitive subject since there was still no wedding band on her finger.

She shook herself then, rousing, and plastered a wide smile on her face. "Well, this was entirely worthless to you. Let me make it up somehow. How can I help you, Chief Brady? What have you got on your plate that the NYPD can help with?"

He smiled back; he nearly shook his head in negation, he nearly told her _no, it's okay_, but then he thought maybe she needed it. A chance to not think about the accident.

"Well, we had a derelict show up in the harbor. Strangest thing."

"Oh?" Detective Beckett shrugged. "Boats aren't my area of expertise."

"Oh, no," he laughed. "I was just sharing. That's about as interesting as my jurisdiction ever gets. Except when you two were there last, of course."

She smiled back, and she looked better, he thought. He hoped. "Hopefully no more homicides."

"No. Other than the boat showing up, it's just missing dogs and bar fights, Detective."

Detective Beckett already looked like she was no longer listening, probably miles away from here, wondering about Richard Castle.

That was okay; he understood. So he talked a little about the derelict - no registration, no name, the mystery of it - just filling the silence until she had collected herself again and moved to leave.

He paid for their coffees, and she shook his hand, and then Chief Brady watched the most beautiful, intelligent, determined woman drive away.

Still with nothing.


	9. Chapter 9

**Learn to Have Been**

* * *

_February 2015_

Rick hasn't pushed her, even though _I thought it was a bomb_ is a pretty big deal and maybe something they should talk about. But he's sensed that she's not entirely okay with him poking into her ongoing cases, and this is more than that, obviously.

Not just that this case is about _him_. But she won't talk about any of her cases. She won't bring the murders home any more, and he's not sure what that means. He keeps trying to be good, focus on the mysteries of his own existence rather than the body drops and the furrowed line in her head when Esposito calls to give her an update.

He tries not to wonder, not to doubt himself, his place in her life because they got _married_ - she proved herself to him and she proved _him_ to himself at the same time. She said, _so what?_ to his subtle differences when she married him, and maybe the differences really are enough to keep the work at work.

Although really, he thinks he might be better off if he stopped thinking about his different brain (_stop saying you're brain damaged, Castle; you're not_). He's filling up the spaces with all the ways he's not quite right, and yet one thing that hasn't changed - he's definitely kept his overactive imagination.

He maybe shouldn't have watched _Terminator Salvation_ last week.

Kate is in their bathroom washing the make-up off her face when he finally screws up the courage to ask.

"Kate, do you ever wonder if... maybe I'm a cyborg?"

She lifts her head from her soapy hands and stares at him in the bathroom mirror.

He rushes to explain, defending just how stupid it sounds. "Like an android of a man. Like a _Blade Runner_ replicant and I just don't know it?"

Kate blinks, and then she ducks her head and rinses the soap off her face. When she's done, using the hand towel to dry her face, she looks at him in the mirror. "Should I administer the Voight-Kampff test to find out?" she says finally.

He stands up straighter, her look sizzling in his guts. "It's hot that you know that."

She smiles, a little too much relief in it, and she turns around and hooks her arms at his neck, presses against him. "I think we're good. That sounds just like you," she says, pushing up on her toes just to tease him - has to be - because the friction of her body against his is incredible.

He dips his head forward, intending to press his lips against that hot mouth, but he has a moment of strange deja vu.

An image of Harrison Ford in _Blade Runner_ asking questions with what was - basically - an advanced lie detector test is now overlaid with a distorted face, a man twisted like a carnival mirror, a thing in the darkness asking _him_ questions.

_Tell me about her._

"Castle?"

His hands are shaking. He bows his forehead to hers and closes his eyes to keep it in, keep it closed, _keep it out, don't let it know-_

"Rick?" she whispers.

"What if I'm a replicant? All the memories are planted there but the personality isn't quite right because no one can really _become_ anyone else. The soul isn't there-"

"No, babe. Stop. That's not you."

He tightens his hold on her and lets out a breath. "Or a clone? Or what if I'm really some guy whose face has been altered to _make_ me look like your Castle, but I'm just a cheap stand-in who-"

"You're not a stand-in," she hisses. Her arm is so tight around his neck that he has trouble breathing, but she's not letting go. She's pushing him back against the shower door and her hip bones are hard against him with the force of her conviction. "No matter if you think your middle name is Alexander or Edgar, you are still you."

"But just the other day, you said sometimes it was so different-"

"No," she says, horror in her voice. "Don't do that. I meant the - wait. Give me a second to say this right, let me say this so you hear me." She closes her eyes as if to think, and yet the hard jolt of his heart under her hand makes her open them again. "I married you, Castle, because I love all the incarnations of you."

"That doesn't sound right," he grumbles.

"That's what a marriage _is._ Don't you see? That's why you have to stand up and make a vow, make _promises_, because people change. People become different than maybe you expected or hoped. The idea is to do those things together, as one, so that we don't grow apart, but _into_ each other. With each other."

Castle lets out a breath, his arms drawing around her despite himself. "But I changed - overnight, Kate. We didn't do that together."

"That's why you were smart to wait," she whispers. Her noses nudges in against his jaw, a soft kiss there. "So you'd know I meant it, so you wouldn't have to worry. We had a few months to grow together, for me to catch up. Okay? That's what it was. So whatever differences you have now from then, I don't care. I don't care. And I'm so sorry I made you think it mattered."

Castle buries his head into her hair, capturing her in the cage of his arms.

She loves him and she's stuck with him, even though he thinks those differences are beginning to matter quite a lot.

She's stopped building theory with him.

* * *

The next morning, he comes right out and says it finally - what he's been turning over in his mind since that night. "You thought it was a bomb because of Jerry Tyson."

Kate flushes and closes her eyes.

"And you believe me now?" he rasps.

"I don't know, Castle," she says. And then her eyes open and she reaches for the French press. He sits at the bar and watches her work, memorizing every step.

He's going to do it. Some day. He's going to make her coffee again the way she likes it - loves it - and he's going to get it right.

He's been practicing ever since she asked him to re-marry her, or is that re-asked him to marry her?, when he knew that by saying yes he was also saying yes to the ghost of Rick Castle who used to be here.

It's a strange, three-person marriage at times, but he's learning to live with it.

"Castle?"

He shifts back to attention, realizing he's gotten lost in the deft movement of her hands on the French press. He's been studying at the espresso machine under a certain tutelage, but he sees now he's got to master the art in _all_ of its forms, not just the perfect foam.

"Sorry, what were you saying?" he asks.

She flashes him a look, measuring, but he's learning to live with that too, and he just waits for her to be reassured.

"There was no bomb," she says again. He assumes it's again. "So I don't know what I believe. The complexity of this whole thing makes me wonder."

"Because it sounds like his kind of complicated revenge," Castle offers.

"But you don't remember who took you, where you were, what happened-"

"No," he growls.

Kate stops. He doesn't apologize; he's been reamed for apologizing anyway.

"Then let's approach this like we always have," he says, feeling a little desperate to move past the black hole in his memory. "We do best when we build theory together."

Kate nods then, though her eyes are on the coffee as she makes it for them both. Doing his job, he thinks. Well, no more of that. There are some things he can do. He wants to build theory. He wants to make her damn coffee.

"Kate," he insists. "The case. The evidence. The _forensics. _Tell me."

"Blood stain on the scrubs they found you in," she rattles off. "Male. No DNA match because it was too degraded."

"Okay," he says calmly, already feeling easier about it. "That's one thing. What else?"

"Salt," she says distractedly, fixing their coffee.

"No, thanks," he answers. "But I like when you put cinnamon in it. That was a good surprise."

Her face goes completely blank for a second and he panics inside - what has he done wrong, what has he said - but she laughs then. "Oh, no. Castle. That wasn't me asking if you wanted salt. That was what Lanie found on those scrubs. Forensics."

He laughs as well, relief trickling slowly back through his body, between his lungs. "Oh, okay."

Her lips quirk. "Sodium chloride - unrefined. Engine grease. And some kind of insect remains - probably from where you were held. But those have been sent to a national testing center and we haven't heard anything yet."

"Still?" he mutters.

She gives him a look, pouring creamer into his coffee. "As much as I want to jump the line, nothing can be done. It takes time. There are hundreds of cases ahead of ours."

He slumps on the stool, rubs his hand through his hair. "What, really, would some insects tell us about what happened?"

She meets his eyes then, shakes her head. "I don't know. Maybe nothing. You were outside, walking on the side of the road in the Hamptons, so of course there's going to be trace elements. We'd have to know where and how first, I think, and then use those forensics to get a match and build a case for the prosecution."

"Then those things don't point to that where and how, do they?" He sighs and takes the mug from her outstretched hand, feels their fingers connect in a way that sends licks of desire to his guts.

He really loves her, and what she does for him, how she stands up under all of this. He used to think it was asking too much, but she made him believe in it again, made him understand.

He just wants to get back to the good place, the place of give and take, where he feels like he can actually stand up with her, where he feels like he's not always the one in need. He wants to be depended upon. "So forensics doesn't help. They've searched the area where I was found and nothing."

"Nothing," she agrees. "There's just - that black Mercedes. And it's a long shot."

"Does... Tyson have the resources to have a black Mercedes?" he finally asks. He doesn't want to harp on Tyson, but that man makes him cold in a dark and deep place, touches a part of Castle he doesn't like to look at too closely. "Does Tyson have the resources for all of this so soon after his last plot?"

Kate's face washes clean of everything. "I hadn't thought of that," she admits. "No? I don't know, Rick. Again, I'm not sure he actually _is_ alive. It could be the plastic surgeon alone - Nieman."

He growls and rubs a hand over his eyes. "Who said you had a fabulous face."

Kate huffs, dismissing it. "Listen, it could be - it could be something NYPD coming back on us. There are plenty of people you and I have put away for murder who would do it again."

"But Espo and Ryan said they've gone through nearly a hundred old cases and nothing."

She looks down at her coffee.

"Kate, whoever this was - it was so well planned. Don't you see? There was intelligence behind this, and most everyone we encounter on the job just isn't that smart. Tyson though. He is."

"So is Bracken," she says roughly.

He narrow his eyes. "Yes, but that's through."

"Is it?" she croaks.

"Yes," he insists. He almost says, _I'd remember that_. But the problem is that he has no memories. Still. "It's done, Kate. And that was - bad - bad enough. No reason now for Bracken to go after me for that. Or you through me, either way."

She looks like she wants to believe him. "But you don't know."

"I don't... no, I don't remember any of it, Kate." Too defensive; he sounds too defensive about it. He stares down at his coffee, tries to recall anything at all. Anything. There's simply nothing. "It's not even black or hazy; it's just _gone_."

"Castle that makes me... hesitant to say that it was Jerry Tyson. I just don't think you could forget that," she whispers.

His eyes startle up to hers. She's not ever said that before. But it looks like she's definitely been thinking it for a long time. She thinks that she's going to catch his kidnapper and he'll take one look at the guy and know it was him.

"You think that catching the guy who did this will miraculously put me back together," he accuses.

Her face crashes. All the hesitating hope, all the pinned expectations, the ridiculousness of her thoughts fall in on her.

"I guess I do," she says, her eyes averted.

"It's not going to fix me," he chokes out. "Having the guy who do it... only means I stop having to watch my back all the time." He tries to get control of himself. Tries to be better for her, find some stability. "Catching the kidnapper means I can go outside without wondering who's going to run me off the sidewalk."

"That's not funny," she whispers.

Was he joking? Oh, maybe he was. He _was_ joking. That's more like himself.

Castle's lips twitch, staring down at the counter. Someone running him off the sidewalk. That one just slipped right out of his mouth without him thinking about it, but it was a joke.

She makes a noise and he glances up, sees her mouth twisting and realizes she's trying not to _laugh_.

He's made her laugh.

Finally.


	10. Chapter 10

**Learn to Have Been**

* * *

_August 2014_

**X**

Jeremy Preswick was not much a news-follower in his current life, though to hear Emma talk, he'd turned into one sometime during their failed first marriage. He didn't remember it though, so he didn't think it counted.

She did, because it had happened to her, to them, but just not the them of now. Which was why his wife - wife again? - insisted he try to make contact with the police detectives who had helped him reclaim his missing life.

Jeremy Preswick had witnessed a murder once upon a time, had even been shot at, the bullet lodged in a fat Russian novel - all of which he hadn't remembered. Still didn't, honestly. He liked to joke that a penchant for difficult literature saved his life, but what he really knew was that Emma had.

Emma, with his dog, who had allowed him back into her life and wouldn't bullshit him about how hard it had been nor how hard it would be.

That was the thing that had pushed Jeremy to finally call the 12th Precinct - not that his wife kept asking about it, faintly nagging - but that he knew Richard Castle was going to find life difficult in the next few months, and that the novelist's fiance might find it more so.

As Emma had. He wished someone had explained it to him. Explained that what he had done in a former life, as an admittedly different person, actually could be held against him by the ones he loved. Emma had been amazing with him that first year, sweet and considerate and funny, but there was only so much a person could take before _it wasn't me_ just didn't fly any more.

The fact was - it had been him, even if he didn't remember it. And the sooner Richard Castle accepted that, the easier it was going to be for him and his almost-wife. Jeremy Preswick knew it, and he felt it was time to repay the old debt; since literature had saved his life that night, he could save an author some heartache.

And so he was going to share that bit of knowledge with the newly recovered Richard Castle.

Jeremy managed to get through to Detective Ryan one day in August. The summer was hot and most had left the city, but Jeremy knew from the news reports that Castle and Detective Beckett hadn't resumed their Hamptons wedding, nor had they budged much from his spacious loft. Circling the wagons, staying close; Jeremy could understand that feeling.

Detective Ryan remembered him, and he was enthusiastic about Jeremy getting a chance to help out Rick Castle. _But it has to be up to him._

Since Jeremy didn't expect Rick Castle to remember him, and if he did, he wouldn't care much what some old victim might say from a murder case five years ago, Jeremy tried to impress upon Kevin Ryan just how important this could be. Would be. Just how _much_ Jeremy Preswick understood being the center of an important investigation and knowing absolutely nothing, doing nothing to help.

But he knew he came off sounding overeager.

He gave Ryan his number in a haze of slight embarrassment and ended the call. He studied the phone for a long moment, rethinking that failed conversation, wishing he'd said just the right thing, but he'd never had a flair for words. He was soft-spoken, and he liked to think before he did speak, but that phone call had been impetuous of him and he hadn't done his best.

When he lifted his head, Emma was standing in the kitchen doorway, studying him. His shoulders slumped but she shook her head, coming to him at the couch, sliding right into his lap like she had used to (she said), like she did now for sure, despite the awkward angle.

He wasn't the asshole who had driven her away from him those years ago, thank God, but he could still be an asshole. It was important to remember that too, to be grateful for this when it was so good.

"I don't think he'll call," he admitted to her. "I'm sorry. I should have-"

"You did just fine, Jer. You did exactly right. At least he knows. They both know."

He nodded and buried his face against her collarbone, her slim and cool fingers coming to his shoulders and hanging on to him, giving him the silence and the space.

He wasn't the old Jeremy, he knew, but he was better. This was better. He could tell Rick Castle that too, if only the man would hear it.

**X**

Jeremy laughed and nudged his finger into Emma's thigh; she startled up from her doze and made a horrified noise, clapping a hand over her mouth.

"No, you weren't drooling. Promise," he told her.

Richard Castle gave a hesitant chuckle and looked towards the detective - Kate - and she was giving him a reassuring smile.

"You meanie," Emma said, swatting his arm. "You should have woken me. I'm so sorry." She turned to Kate and Rick, running a hand over her belly and giving them one of those shy smiles.

He loved those smiles. Made him proud.

"It's not a problem at all," Kate was saying. She had leaned forward on the couch to touch Emma's knee, gave them a wink. "He does it all the time."

Jeremy laughed - Rick's turn to look horrified - but he'd known for a few days now that Rick was slow in developing his sense of humor. They'd had a few coffee dates at the loft, a few private conversations. There was some confusion and difficulty, but Jeremy was determined to be here. Rick was getting there, but-

"I do," Rick said, wincing. "Doze off in the middle of things. It's the physical therapy every day. But it helps."

"I had a long week - late at work every night. I'm mortified. I fell asleep at the theatre too," Emma said, shaking her head. "It's the pregnancy. I feel a nap coming on at any moment."

"Do we need to go?" Jeremy said artlessly. Sometimes he did that, said the thoughtless thing.

"No!" Emma cried, startling with a laugh. "No, no. I'm having a good time. You guys are - a delight. Kate, Rick, please do forgive me. What did I miss?"

Kate shifted forward. "Do you all want some coffee?"

"Oh, no. Don't let us-"

"I could use a cup myself," Kate said. "And it's decaf. Rick?"

"Yeah, definitely," he said. He looked eager, and he turned to Emma with that charming smile that Jeremy remembered from when they had first met. "Don't tell her no, because I'm dependent on Kate for a quality cup. I've completely forgotten how to work the espresso machine. Clean forgot. And I've tried to make it, but I always do something not right. Not how it used to be."

Jeremy flashed a knowing look to Emma and she smiled back, catching his meaning, her lips pressed tightly. She gave a nod and stood up. "Kate, let me help. It'll wake me up a little."

As Emma passed, she scratched his shoulder in understanding and left him to it.

Jeremy sat forward and put his elbows on his knees, rubbed his jaw. "Rick."

The man oriented towards him, guileless eyes, but there was a cloud there. Jeremy had seen that last week when they'd talked too, the way the charm slipped and the real man stood clueless.

"You think about it?" Jeremy said quietly. "What I told you before."

Rick paused, that brief flicker of insecurity and fear that Jeremy knew all too well. He had intimate experience of that sensation, of how your mind scrambled to remember, how you panicked a little because you knew you were supposed to know but it just wasn't there.

"When we met for coffee last week," Jeremy supplied. "I told you about how it had gone for me, and how hard it was to integrate my new personality with my old life. The consequences. You know?"

Rick didn't blink this time; he just hung his head and flexed his hands on his knees. "I know. I'm responsible for what I did even if I don't remember it. But that's _not_ my problem, Jeremy. I remember it."

"You remember that life," Jeremy said.

"I remember all of it. And I know you don't. Of course, there are small things I don't have, and the short-term memory keeps me from figuring out exactly - like the coffee. A windsor knot."

"Writing."

Castle flinched then.

Jeremy rubbed his jaw and glanced back at the kitchen, saw Kate and Emma in conversation over the espresso machine. There was ice cream out on the counter too, which was a nice touch, and it would keep them a little while longer.

His wife was good.

"Writing is a pretty big thing," Jeremy said. "Wouldn't you say? Not a windsor knot."

"Did she put you up to this?"

For a moment, Jeremy was floored to think that Rick saw through him, that the man knew Emma had put him up to it, but then he realized that Rick meant Kate.

"She didn't put me up to anything. This is the first conversation I've had with her that's lasted longer than ten minutes," Jeremy said. "Scout's honor."

Rick nodded. "I believe you. Just she's - she hasn't asked, and I don't talk about it, and I guess I should."

"You don't have to talk," Jeremy said easily. "I'm not your therapist."

"That's for sure," Castle muttered. It was the first time that Jeremy had seen some kind of bitterness on his face, in his tone. That it was aimed at the therapist might be good; his therapist might be cracking him open.

"I just meant - there's this standard everyone holds you up to. Like I said when we got coffee. Emma looked at me and she saw the old Jeremy on top of who I am now, who I'd become now that I have amnesia."

Rick's hands curled up on his knees, and his eyes drifted over Jeremy's shoulder. To Kate, no doubt. He did that a lot; she was probably the one who gave him little nudges, helped him remember. Emma had done that for him too, in the beginning. Until they had a knockdown drag-out fight about it.

"I wanted to remind you," Jeremy kept going, pressing on. "Because it was the most difficult part of integrating my life - the old and the new. What I couldn't remember doing - I still had to suffer for. The things you were that you don't remember have to be reconciled to what and who you are now. But at the same time-"

"Emma took you back," Rick interrupted. "She felt sorry for you and she took you back."

Jeremy cracked a grin, glanced behind him at Emma, saw Kate holding out bowls to his wife. He didn't have much time.

"She didn't feel sorry for me," Jeremy said, turning around and piercing Rick with a long look. "I thought that too at first. But it's not true. It's love. I broke her heart, that first time, and who knows what she did to me, but the love was there. And then, not knowing any better this time, I probably seduced her."

"Seduced me?" Emma exclaimed, coming up fast behind him. She slid around the arm of the couch with two bowls of ice cream and laid them on the coffee table between him and Rick. "Hardly. I seduced you."

She winked and kissed his forehead, her hand on his shoulder in a squeeze, and then she was heading back to the kitchen for the coffee. Jeremy watched her go, saw Kate coming forward with two more bowls.

Time was up.

"Maybe I fell in love, maybe she fell in love all over again. Maybe that's what it was. But it wasn't pity. Pity wouldn't put up with my broken brain. Only love."

He saw he had Rick's attention now, that the man was looking at him but also not looking at him. His eyes fixed on Kate, watching her come towards them with ice cream. Emma handed Jeremy his coffee and he took it, gave her a sly smile.

"You good?" she murmured, sinking down into the couch with him.

He took a sip of the coffee - wow, it was good - and arched an eyebrow at her. She giggled and nudged his shoulder, shaking her head at him.

But he thought maybe he'd said what Rick needed to hear. He glanced over at them, Rick and Kate, and saw that Rick had drawn her to his chair so that she sat perched on the arm, her eyes on him as she cradled a mug of coffee to her chest.

Rick was looking at her differently, Jeremy thought. Seeing her, maybe, for the first time in a good long while.

"My work here is done," he whispered to his wife.

Emma laughed again and put her mug on the coffee table, gathered up both bowls of ice cream. She handed him one. "Don't get smug."

Jeremy shoveled a big spoonful of something that smelled like mocha and cinnamon into his mouth, growling as it went down cold and sharp. "You like me smug."

"I like you. Period."

He felt eyes on them and glanced up, saw that Rick was studying them like a man looking for an instruction manual.

**X**


	11. Chapter 11

**Learn to Have Been**

* * *

_February 2015_

Kate won't let him come to the precinct this morning.

But he's cracked some jokes lately that make him feel more like his old self, so the Rick Castle Haunting must be working, and he feels pretty good about that. Reclaiming her smile for himself, the new man, even without the requisite coffee.

He kisses her at the front door as she leaves for work, and his fingers trail at her neck as she steps away. She looks reluctant to go, as she has every day since June, but now he tells himself he sees a little more heat in her eyes, a little less worry.

That does it for him. He feels pretty good.

And, anyway, it's time to try something.

He's been putting it off because Richard Castle is - at his heart - a writer. And what if it doesn't come? He's been afraid, yes, and he's always procrastinated as part of his writing process, so he told himself it was just fine, all part of the deal.

Well, time to sit down and do it.

Castle drains the last of his Kate-made coffee, noting that she did actually sprinkle cinnamon in it again - not nutmeg, _never, kitten_ - and then he refills his mug and takes it with him into the office. He's still in just his robe and a dark t-shirt, plaid pajama pants, but he doesn't want to get lost in morning routines and forget his intentions.

Rick sits down in his desk chair, touches the arms as he eases into position. The chair feels comfortable, familiar, though that could be due to Beckett last November. She was the one who pushed him down in it and _persuaded_ him into a December wedding, rather than wait until spring again. She wanted to avoid the spring.

He smiles at the memory, the way she kept asking about his _font_, but before he can get lost in the past, Castle sits up straight, clears his throat.

He finds his coffee still in his hand, abashed at the realization, and he sets his mug on the desk blotter. The power cord is plugged into his laptop, so he tugs the computer towards his chest, confident it's ready for him. He opens the lid and sees that the battery reads 100%, so Castle pulls out the cord and drops it to the floor. He cradles the laptop against him, pushing back in the chair, his fingers resting on the keys.

Okay, so far, so good.

Castle clears his throat, fingers on the home row for a second longer, then he pushes the cursor across the screen, hovering at the application.

He lifts his head and reaches for his mug of coffee, takes a long drink, burning the back of his throat with it.

Coffee. He's going to learn to make Kate's coffee. Shit, he nearly forgot that. Near thing. His mind wandered a moment with the familiar weight of the laptop, but he's got it now.

Castle winces and double clicks the application, surprised when the blank document comes up instead of his browser.

But it's important that he figure out the French press as well as the espresso machine, and so Castle opens his browser and does a google search for an instruction video on youtube. Maybe there's something on wikiHow?

Ever since they got married, he's wanted to give her back _something_ of the old Rick. He really needs to do this, fix this.

Fix her coffee, fix some of the tension still rippling between them.

He wants to go to the precinct again, but he knows he still needs the therapy, the associational puzzles, the mental training. The OT was the one who encouraged him to figure out the espresso machine, actually, said it would be a good idea.

He can do it. French press. He can do this.

* * *

His daughter has shown up in the doorway of the office, arms crossed over her chest. "What have you been doing?"

"Okay, true confession time," he says. He hopes, fervently, that he wasn't supposed to have met Alexis for lunch. That's happened before. "I've been playing candy crush on my phone."

Alexis winces at him but she doesn't say anything about another missed appointment - she never does. Castle only grins and stands up from the desk, moving around it to embrace his daughter.

"What?" he teases, hugging her a little harder so that he picks her up off her feet. "You're the one who got me addicted. Your own fault."

"No, Dad. That was all you," she mutters. But she kisses his cheek and he finally drops her, making her huff at him. "And you downloaded the app on my phone so you can log in and play extra lives. Don't you remember?"

He's been practicing for this very moment; he really has. Not even a lie. So the next thing out of his mouth comes smoothly, without a hitch. "If I can't remember _that_, then something really is wrong. Hand over your phone. I get five extra lives."

Alexis narrows her eyes. "You rehearsed that one, didn't you?"

"Come on. That was a good one. That's funny stuff."

Alexis huffs. "Dad, this whole obsession with your sense of humor is getting kinda old. You should let it come naturally."

Castle drops down in his chair and waves her off, but some of the shiny fun has worn off the afternoon. "Yeah, yeah, I know. It's for Kate, though. She misses my amazing wit."

Alexis lifts a slim eyebrow. "I'm not so sure about that, exactly. I think humor is the last thing on her mind."

Well, _something_ is missing in his head, his personality, and the times he's been a little more acerbic, mordant even - that gallows humor - Kate has responded with a pressed-lips smile. Like she doesn't want to, but she loves it. He _is_ the master of the macabre. Or he was.

"Can we just forget about the comedy routine?" Alexis says. She shifts forward and leans a hip against his desk, glancing not-at-all-casually to the laptop. "What are you writing?"

"My comedy routine," he mutters, then shakes his head. "Nothing. Looking at how-to videos online."

He spent all afternoon researching espresso, going down a veritable rabbit hole of caffeine-related links, and then he spent the next few hours concocting the perfect set-up for his joke to be unleashed upon whomever walked in the room first. In between playing Candy Crush, of course. That's how he got the idea for that line in the first place.

"How-to videos?"

"Yeah, you know. Tying a Windsor knot is next on my list."

Alexis sighs, turning from the laptop to look at him. He thinks she sees too much - they all do. He's been doing a better job of it lately, hiding the newness, the rough edges of the non-polished Rick, but it's harder than he thought to don the old Castle. It's not a good graft; he keeps splitting seams.

Like his joke when Alexis arrived. Pretty lame, he can admit it. He doesn't know how to do better. Writing jokes isn't like writing a novel-

Oh, the _novel._ He meant to do that today. He meant to _write _today.

"God damn it," he snaps.

Alexis startles so hard that her foot slips and she has to catch herself on the edge of his desk. "Dad?"

Rick growls and rubs two fingers at his forehead. "Sorry, I'm sorry. I meant to write - I forgot again. I just. I forgot again." Always forgetting, losing his train of thought.

"Hey, it's okay. You know it's okay. You gotta cut yourself some slack," she says, leaning in and awkwardly patting his back. "Dad. Come on. You're doing so much better. Kate says you've been making dinner."

He meant to _write_ today. He sat down at his damn desk and set up his laptop and he even opened the blank word document and _still_ he forgot.

He forgot.

He's never going to get all his pieces back together.

* * *

It's dark, but the city presses a blue glow against their bedroom windows. Kate is in moonlight, a still form in the bed at his side, but Castle angles the book light a little more steeply to keep the shine from her face.

He presses his cheek to the pillow and lifts a hand to turn the page, but it's no use. He remembers every detail of Nikki Heat, every last sentence he edited, every plot point, every bit of dialogue he painstakingly crafted.

Rick Castle might not have any idea how to do it again, but he definitely remembers doing it the first time.

Gina was a bitch about this one too; he definitely remembers that. And handing the first copy, hot off the presses, over to one Detective Beckett, amused by her studied nonchalance and her squawking indignation. He remembers autographing the dedication page, the words he wrote for her alone, remembers wrapping it in the box.

And then using the gift to steal police files.

No, wait. Actually. No. He wrapped the final Derrick Storm novel, used that one to steal police files.

Huh. That's not good. He's getting things mixed up.

Castle clicks off the light, lowers the book to his chest, and stares up at the ceiling.

Is it age or brain? This is the first set of memories that have merged like that, flowed one to the other. His holes are usually centered around those missing weeks, how he got out there on the road walking towards town, and then the short term stuff - his immediately previous thoughts - those will leave him.

But that's not to say blending his memories is necessarily abnormal. He remembers getting details of Alexis's childhood out of order or melding one cute saying of hers with another. Once he told Gina an embarrassing story about Meredith, trying to make her feel better, and found out - quite violently - that the story had actually been Gina's all along.

So it's possible he's done that now. Possible it's not a symptom.

"Mm, Castle..."

Rick yelps and slams the book shut, turns over in bed and tries to slide Nikki Heat between the mattress and the side table, but Kate catches him, awake and sliding her hand at his spine.

"What are you doing?"

"Nothing. Reading. Just reading," he says. "Waiting for something to click."

Kate presses her body against his back and reaches over him, snags his fingers. "What are you reading so late at night?" She draws the book up and chuckles softly. "_Heat Wave_?"

He swallows and allows her to take it; the dark cover is swallowed by the night.

"Castle, page 105, hmm?"

He remembers that. "Yeah," he nods. "Yeah, that's it."

But she's studying him, a careful and tender exactness about her gaze that makes him squirm. She lowers the book to the mattress at his side and lays her cheek against his chest, surprising him entirely.

"Kate?"

"It's the writing," she murmurs. "That's what you're doing."

He shuts his eyes.

"Castle," she starts, but she doesn't go on. How can she? The work is what drew them together - a copycat killer, solving murders, Kate as his muse.

And he's not sure he can get that back. Scares him to death, thinking it might be gone.

"Is it helping?" she whispers.

"No," he admits.

Kate curls her body around his and her hand slides to his neck, her fingers strong and sure like she'll hold him together. She doesn't offer another word.

He doesn't have any words either.


	12. Chapter 12

**Learn to Have Been**

* * *

_September 2014_

**X**

Lanie had a fresh one.

Well, fresh for her, judging by the warning phone call she'd gone from Javi, not so fresh for the dead body found in Central Park. Had a smell, the victim did, and good thing for Lanie that her sense of smell had gone dead long ago, sometime during her second year of med school.

Still, it wasn't going to be pretty. Preemptively, she swiped a little vicks and put it under her nose.

Then she texted Kate Beckett that she'd have to cancel their lunch date, and she set about getting her autopsy suite ready. She arranged the equipment, aligned the sterilized trays, plugged in the bone saw, set out the rib spreader - Perlmutter tended to scrupulously reorganize her suite, annoying her to no end by putting things away wrong. But he was senior, and she was paying her dues, and she just adjusted things back to how she liked them, tried to do the sterilizing herself.

Knowing the body would be unidentified when it came in, Dr Parish punched up the automated chart on the computer at the desk, started filling in the things she did know to speed up the process. The system generated a number, printed it out in triplicate, and the ME peeled the stickers off from the label maker, pasted one onto the clipboard where she would mark time of delivery and eventually the cold storage number.

The second sticker she smoothed neatly over the hospital ID bracelet they used for toe tags, being sure not to unstick the bracelet from the clipboard, waiting for the body to arrive.

Finally, Lanie gowned up and slid the plastic safety glasses over her face, but something made her wait on the blue gloves.

Her phone vibrated at the computer station, and she headed over to view the message alert before it could fade.

_Want me to bring us both something?_

Lanie grinned and picked up her phone, glad she'd waited on the gloves, and texted her back. _A Caesar salad would be divine. But I'm warning you, might wanna eat yours before you get here._

She wondered if Castle would come in with Kate. Probably not, all things considered. Too bad; Lanie enjoyed their harmless flirting, his flattering charm. And it'd been entirely too long since Rick Castle had been deviously, adorably charming.

She worried about him. She never used to worry about Richard Castle, and now look - the things he drove her too. Lanie was pretty sure that Kate Beckett couldn't be pried away from that man with a rib spreader, but just what was she clinging to, the ME couldn't say.

Rick Castle wasn't entirely Rick Castle any more.

The body came in, attended only by Javier who had apparently left his partner on scene to organize a canvas of Central Park. Javi flirted too, but in a much more aggressive and presumptuous way, like he was staking claim, and today - no, not-uh, Javier Esposito - that was _not_ going to fly today. She hadn't even eaten lunch yet.

Dr Parish pushed him out of her autopsy suite, and she snapped on her blue gloves and pulled down the black zipper.

Whew. Bad one.

Lanie cleared her throat and started the digital recorder, making sure the light was red on the computer at the desk. She picked up the clipboard from where she'd put it down when Javi had started in on her, and then she went back to the body and pushed apart the sides of the black bag.

As she spoke towards the mic, Dr Parish gave a cursory exam of the victim, noting anterior damage, animal markings, even bone in some places._  
_

She peeled the ID bracelet from the clipboard, but she merely stuck the tag to the body bag, not yet willing to interrupt her visual inspection. She made notations on the human figure on the clipboard, anterior for now, posterior later when she could get a look, and she quickly fed that information to the recording.

Perlmutter came in on her in the middle of it; he had three techs with him to move the body. He identified himself to the recording and then gestured at the body. "Are you finished?"

"I'm finished," she said. _Crotchety old man_, she thought. "Let's move him."

The techs untangled the black body bag from the victim and then lifted him from the gurney to the stainless steel table. They held the body up so she could inspect his badly decomposed skin, and she made note of the multitude of abrasions and lacerations, not to mention predation.

Coyotes, she thought, but she didn't say it. Not until she had teeth marks and proof.

Perlmutter and the techs left her to it, and Lanie began to dictate detailed notes to the digital recording, moving carefully about the body until she was certain she'd been thorough. They said she and Kate Beckett were polar opposites, that Lanie was loud and Kate was not, but in the work - no, in the work, they were the same.

And Lanie was bone deep in the chest cavity when Detective Beckett showed up. Kate took a stumbling step back, nose wrinkling, and Lanie nodded towards the empty stainless steel table.

"Really?" Kate asked her. "You want me to leave it there?"

"Please, honey. It's the most sterile thing in here. Cleaner than your kitchen table."

"I don't want to think about that," Kate muttered. "Especially since it's Castle's kitchen table." And by that look on her face, the things they'd _done_ on that kitchen table.

Lanie laughed at her friend but she was gowned and gloved and the protective glasses were slipping down her nose. Gonna be like that, the way this body looked, one of those days.

"What've you got?" Kate asked her, staying away from the body and nearer to the plastic bag with their salads in it.

Lanie sighed. "No ID. Found in Central Park."

"He's been out there a while," Kate remarked.

"Months," she agreed. "I'll have a better time frame, but honey, this is Javier's case. Not yours. You are here to serve me lunch."

Kate chuckled. "True, not my case. I have enough on my plate anyway."

With Castle. That was for sure. "So talk to me, Kate Beckett. Cause I'm going to need to figure out how to ID this guy without any fingerprints or even a face - even his teeth have been rearranged by animals - so you talk to me. Distract me."

"No fingerprints?"

"No _fingers_," she complained. "In fact, look at this." She stepped back and indicated the John Doe's right arm. Which was mostly gone. Left arm not much better, though the palm remained. "It's bad."

And of course Kate Beckett wasn't going to let that kind of thing go; of course it wouldn't be harmless chitchat about a Kate Spade clearance sale or the latest scary thing the occupational therapist had said about Castle. Nope, all about the job.

"Wild animals?"

"Possibly," Lanie admitted. "I haven't finished my initial findings though."

"Huh."

"No, not-uh," Lanie said to her, pointing a gloved finger. "Not your case, Kate Beckett."

Kate smiled, turned her head away. "Are you going to finish the autopsy or stop and eat with me?"

"Give me fifteen minutes, and then I'm all yours."

Kate picked up the bag with their salads and went back through the doors of the autopsy suite, waving her fingers as she headed for Parish's office.

It struck Lanie then that they were lucky. If Castle had still been missing, a John Doe like this would have wrecked Kate Beckett. Thank God he was safely at home, if not completely, all the way, really with them.

Rick Castle had all his fingers though, and that was good.

**X**


	13. Chapter 13

**Learn to Have Been**

* * *

_February 2015_

**X**

Rick Castle shows up at the 12th.

He knows better, but he's tired of sitting at home forgetting that he needs to write. He wants to know what's happening on the case - his case, he knows it's his case still; she hasn't dropped it - and there's been an anxiety growing in him all winter.

It's like he knew. Somehow, he knew this was the day, this was the break, this was going to happen. He thinks it's fate. The universe - which owes him big time - conspiring to put him here, two to-go coffees in his hands that he didn't make, his forward movement arrested at the bullpen.

He hasn't even gotten to her desk.

"Is that him?" he croaks, staring at the grainy photo Kate's just slammed up on the murder board. It's blurry and he can't really see anything at all, just a sharp nose. A man, definitely, but that's all.

She whirls around, a choking noise in her throat. "Castle. What are you _doing here_?" Kate jerks forward, comes swiftly to his side, bearing down on him and driving him back towards the break room, her eyes both furious and heartbroken.

He still has those coffees, and she takes them out of his hands, puts them on the cafe table as if they're nothing.

"Castle," she starts, eyes closing.

"I needed to hear your voice," he admits, entirely involuntarily. "Is that him?"

"You're not - you shouldn't have the left loft. God, Castle. You still forget-"

"I forget what I'm _doing_. Not where I live," he hisses back. "And not who I am. Not what matters to me. _Was that him_?"

She swallows and turns her head as if to look through the closed blinds and the bullpen to that one cropped photo. "That was the driver of the black Mercedes. We finally got a shot of him."

Castle flinches, finds his balance has completely deserted him, and he has to throw out a hand to grip the cafe table, keep himself upright. Kate lets out a breath and catches his elbow, the back of his jacket.

"Whoa, Castle. Hey, what's wrong? Babe, you should sit-"

"I'm fine," he grits out. He shakes his head. "The black Mercedes."

"That day Campbell picked you up," she offers. "Not the accident, but that day. It could be absolutely nothing."

They know it's a black Mercedes that day from the accident because of the paint scraped against the front and side of his car. The paint was traced to GL550s made the year before, thought it could be one of thousands sold on the eastern seaboard.

"You think it's the same?" he asks, finally looking at Kate. "Same as the accident. Was he following me? Scouring the neighborhood?"

She's biting her bottom lip, her elbows pressed into her sides, hands clasped together just under her sternum. It's that protective gesture he remembers from the time right after she was shot, when she used to press her thumb into the scar when she thought no one was looking.

It's her sign of distress.

He shouldn't have come. This was a mistake. She's not in a good place, and for sure he's not either.

"I don't know if it's the same," she whispers. Her heads turns away from him. "It's a wild goose chase, and I know it, Castle. I know it. I - this is the most important case of our lives and I can't even-"

He straightens up and crushes her in his embrace, one arm around her shoulders to catch the back of her head and hold her against him. "No, don't. Don't make this into another black hole, Kate."

She stiffens, but she doesn't pull away from him. Not at first. She takes a moment, and he can feel her deep breathing, and only when he loosens his arms does she duck out of them.

"I'm okay," she says finally, knuckle pushed under her eye. No tears that he can see, but she's close.

"You're not okay. Knock off for today, Kate. Take me back home in case I lose my way."

She chokes on a little laugh and squeezes his hand, and he realizes with a sharp and fierce triumph that he did it.

He was exactly who she needed, the man she's missed, and her eyes are on his, desperately grateful for his comic relief - for him. He made an inappropriate joke at an appropriate time and she's looking at him like he's exactly what she wants. More than anything.

"Okay," she says finally. "I'll take you home. I should. You're right."

She laces her fingers with his and tugs him after her towards the door.

He can't help but look at the board as they go.

**X**

In her unmarked, the sunlight comes flaring through the gaps in the buildings, hitting his eyes and blinding him. He has a headache; there's a dryness in his throat he can't swallow down.

Light sears, suddenly on.

Blinding him.

Fades to black.

"Castle."

Blinds him.

Black.

Blinds him-

"Rick?"

Fades - fades. Fades.

"Rick, hey. Hey, talk to me."

_Tell me about her._

He groans and rocks forward, burying his head between his knees as everything tilts sickeningly off its axis.

_We're supposed to get married. She's surrounded with people. She's a cop._

"Castle? Castle, I need you to look at me."

_I need you to concentrate, Mr Castle. These are not hard questions._

"Look at me. Please, just-"

He jerks upright, sucking in a breath that won't make it, scrabbles at his chest to yank the seatbelt away, off, he needs it off.

"Rick, stop-"

_Just tell us about her._

"No," he croaks, squeezing his eyes shut and shoving a hand for the door, slamming his knuckles into the handle and yelping as the pain pops violently up his arm and into his shoulder.

She's gripping him fiercely, leaning over the console, her eyes boring into his, words strong and demanding and calling to him. He gasps, breathing again, realizes one of them is crying.

Both of them are crying.

"Sorry," he croaks out, blinking hard.

She doesn't even correct him; she presses her palm to his neck and her thumb braces his chin and they both try to breathe, just breathe even as wetness slicks his cheeks.

"What was that?" she says finally. Soft.

"I don't know," he says, staring back at her.

"Castle, you're _crying_."

"So are you," he says inanely. It's dark, it was dark, but fiercely bright, and all of it is sinks below the surface. "The light hurt my eyes."

"The light hurt your eyes."

He nods, shying a look towards the passenger window, wincing as the sunlight hits him. The light on his face, the thing waiting below the surface, the darkness and the sweat and _don't tell them, don't say it, she's a cop, she has protection, don't tell them._

She's pulled over, he realizes then. She pulled the car over and they're parked crazily near the curb in a no parking zone and there are horns honking and he has to bow his head and press his fingers into his temples. His head hurts. Maybe this is a migraine.

"Okay, okay, a headache?" she says then. "I know they're bad. I'll get you home." Did he say it out loud or does she just know?

Either way, it's clear that she's not going to ask.

He can't bear for her to ask.

_Don't say it._

_Don't tell them._

_But she's a cop; she has a gun - they can't hurt her._


	14. Chapter 14

**Learn to Have Been**

* * *

_October 2014_

**X**

Joey "Monster" Malone showed up at the 12th Precinct when he couldn't get his detective on the phone.

Two years ago, when Joey was fourteen, this old-ass detective had gotten all up in his face, talking like he _knew_ him, like he'd been on the streets, like some sweetness and good-cop shit was going to turn Monster into a rat.

Monster wasn't no rat.

But, see, turned out _Detective _Javier Esposito did kinda know what he was talking about. Turned out he wasn't talking out of his ass and making cold promises. So when he'd rolled on that white dude (no white man was gonna lord it over him anyway, right?), it had been Detective Esposito who dropped him at home and said _get your ass to school_.

And then Esposito had called like, shit, all the time, man.

There were a few times where it went longer, where it had not been all the time, which was cool, it was cool, no problem. And then the cop would be all showing up at his doorstep and wanting to make it right and saying it was a bad case and things had gotten real and then Joey would hear some awesome-but-true stories about what had gone down that weekend or early morning when Esposito had been MIA for those phone calls.

Now that Joey was sixteen, he didn't need no baby-sitter. He had a driver's license cause Esposito taught him and had taken him to the DMV for the test, though he didn't have no car yet. But he was thinking, in the back of his mind, like, if he did right, you know. If he kept straight, maybe the cop would see him to a car by graduation.

If he graduated high school. Yeah, yeah, he'd probably do that. For sure. Yeah, he was solid on that. He had the grades; he could _get _the grades.

But Joey was sixteen and the phone calls had mostly stopped. The every week thing, anyway, because Joey had _told _him, you don't gotta baby-sit me. And Esposito hadn't, and that was cool. It was better. Because now he could actually text the Detective himself and the guy would text him back like immediate, and then maybe every few months, he'd call and the Detective would talk to him without sounding like he was rushing somewhere else and that was pretty legit. They had a thing, now, like a legit and solid thing, and Joey knew that even if it wasn't every week, it was still something important.

Only Esposito hadn't texted him back in _weeks_, and the last call he'd made like a month ago had gotten him nowhere.

But, shit, man, Joey _ruled_ Washington Heights. His man, his D, had to know what'd been going down. _See something say something_, right?

So, way he figured it, he had a legit reason to show up like this.

But the damn desk cop wasn't into his reasons, or ignored them, and now Joey was cooling his heels in the damn lobby like a street crim, because, aw, man, he probably was this close to being one. He could get his grades up; he would graduate.

So when he saw Esposito hauling ass outta there, Joey sprang up from his seat and rushed the guy, nearly got punched in the face for it. The detective jumped back, his face cleared, and then he gripped Joey by the lapels of his jacket and shook him.

"I nearly drew down on you, you little-"

"I got intel for you, man. Like I'm your snitch, a'ight, and you ain't been calling me back."

Esposito's face hardened and then went slack and he shook his head and then collared Joey, an arm tight around his neck as he hauled him back towards the elevator. "Yo, this twerp's with me."

"Twerp?" he yelled, flushing pink when his voice broke like he was thirteen.

"Shut up, Joey. What're you doing here, kid? There's reasons I hadn't got you back. It's been a little crazy here since-"

"Yeah, I _know_." Joey rubbed the back of his neck when Esposito let him go. Elevator creaked as it went up. "You think that's not all over the papers? The writer and his chick?"

"That chick is Detective Beckett."

"I know, man. My uncle even asked me about them."

Esposito sent him a sidelong glance and seemed to get that something was up. But he pulled Joey off the elevator and into the bullpen, sat him down at his desk. Joey grinned and tilted back in the swivel chair, feeling pretty great now.

"All right. Spill it. You got something. I can see it on your face."

"Just that Washington Heights is where the shit goes down, man. And if you were a good enough cop, you'd have already come asking me."

"Don't be a badass when you're not."

Joey sat up straighter, making like he was gonna get out of there for a comment like that, but Esposito pushed him back into the chair, hulked over him.

"You're here. I'm here. So spill it." Esposito straightened up. "What do you know?"

Joey grinned. "Man, you're gonna be so grateful to me. You're gonna-"

"Joey," he barked.

"There was this white guy asking around about Kate Beckett."

Esposito sank down on his desk. "Oh yeah? There was, huh?" Esposito didn't look like he believed him.

"In Washington Heights, talking to the crews, you know? Stupid-ass white guy, we were all thinking, white guy in Washington Heights. That ain't smart. But then my friend Carlos got a look at him."

"Carlos."

"Yeah, you know him. Carlos said this white guy was scary as shit. He said, _that's one scary motherf-._"

"What'd I tell you about cursing at me?"

"Man, let me explain my goods. Cause I got the goods. Legit."

"Fine. You got the goods. Go on."

"This white guy walking around Washington Heights asking about the detective, your girl, you know? Asking did she still come around and shake down drug dealers, shit like that."

"Some white guy - some 'scary' white guy - was in Washington Heights asking about Detective Beckett."

Joey spread his hands. "What it sound like to me. Asking about her _mom_."

The look on the cop's face had suddenly turned deadly. Scared the shit out of Joey, just seeing that dead-eye look on a man who had been like an old-ass brother, and he clutched the armrests of the chair and plowed on, talking fast because he knew there was something really really wrong.

"I don't know her mom, don't know _shit _about her mom, man, I swear. But this guy, Esposito. This white guy - he has a fake hand."

Esposito's face was completely blank. "A fake hand."

"Like mechanical or something. Scared Carlos, man. I never seen Carlos scared before. He didn't want to tell me about it. He didn't want to _talk_, man. And Carlos can go on."

"Like some people I know." But Esposito was looking thoughtful, and that had been all Joey wanted. Been too long since Esposito got back to him. "Joey, isn't Carlos the guy you told me was making meth?"

Joey shrugged.

"Right, thought so."

"But that helps you, right? When I found out people been talking to a white guy about your detective, I knew it would be the goods."

"Joey-"

Joey sat forward. "Oh, and this was before the accident. Back in January."

"January? And you're just now coming to me?" Esposito leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest.

"I done just found out, man. I tried calling you."

"You said Carlos wouldn't talk about it."

"No, not-uh, he won't. But the manager at the Stop-n-Go. He's gonna give me a job and he was asking for references and I gave all the smart white people I know. Looks good having white people on there."

"Including Detective Beckett, I'm assuming."

"Course."

"Did you make up a phone number for her contact information?" Esposito said, narrowing his eyes.

"Naw." Joey grinned even wider. "I already got her digits. Swiped 'em from you. Case I needed to baby-sit you some day and had to call the lady."

"Uh-huh." Oh, whoa, the cop did not look happy about that either. The dead look was back, the glittering _I've killed people_ look.

"But that's when the manager told me about the guy. He said it was so strange I knew this woman, cause fake hand guy was asking questions about her, and then Carlos tried shoplifting a buncha cold meds and Fake-Hand dealt with it, outright street judicious, man."

"Dealt with it." Deeper frown.

"I asked Carlos and he was shifty-eyed, said the guy in there gave him nightmares. The fake hand damaged the nerve in his neck - it was so strong - and now Carlos is all crunched up on one side. Not from meth, man. See, I did your job for you. You're welcome."

Esposito rubbed the side of his face, and then said something Joey hadn't expected one little bit. "Look, Joey. No more of this."

"What? Don't you wanna get the lady cop over here and I can tell her someone knows something about her mom-"

"Beckett does not need this right now. Joey. This isn't a game. Washington Heights - for her - is _not_ a game."

Joey jerked to his feet, his chest flaring hot with that accusation, but Esposito yanked him back down to the chair and held him there.

"You sit down. Listen to me. You're trying to help. I get it. But what happened to Beckett this summer is serious stuff - serious _trouble_ - and she cannot take her eyes off of that for anything. Not even her mother's case. You-"

"But this guy is spreading it around that she's in on the _drugs_, man. That something her mom did-"

"No," Esposito growled at him. "Joey." A flare of his nostrils like he was trying to calm down. "No. You let me do the detective work. You let me handle this for her. Okay?"

Joey glared back at him. Not cool. "I got _legit_ information for you."

"Which _I _will deal with." Another cold glare. "You're coming with me."

And then Esposito yanked him to his feet and hustled him back to the elevator.

**X**


	15. Chapter 15

**Learn to Have Been**

* * *

_February 2015_

To say she's surprised when she opens the loft door is an understatement. Javier stands before her with a soulsick look in his eyes, and her heart hits the cage of her ribs.

"Espo?"

"Beckett," he starts, but falls terribly silent.

"What's going on?" she says. She just got Castle back to the apartment only a few hours ago, has been delicately avoiding the conversation they had in the precinct this morning, even worse, avoiding the way he fell apart afterwards. She has too many questions, never any answers, and she's still trying to decide if she should have pushed him.

Maybe it was memories. She doesn't want to hope too much, but memories would be a good sign. They need something good.

"I messed up," Esposito says. "This is on me, Beckett. I messed up and I ignored the kid when I should have-"

"What kid?" she cuts in harshly. She's disoriented by having Esposito standing in front of her, shame-faced and trying to explain. "What's messed up?"

Javi takes a quick breath and steps forward, gives her that _you mind?_ look as he slips past her. Kate shuts the door after him, turning to confront this strange confession, but Castle has come out from the bedroom.

"Sito," he smiles. It's stretched too tight, though. He looks uncomfortable, still rattled. "What brings you to our humble abode?"

He sounds like himself, Kate think desperately. It's been a long time coming, but for some reason, right this moment, he sounds like Castle even with the out-of-sync look on his face. She's clinging to that, and she knows she is, but she can't help the dread that's taken lodge in her guts at Espo's arrival.

"Castle, man, I messed up. I dropped the ball on this. I didn't see it for what it was and I was pissed off at Joey for trying to play the tragedy."

"Joey?" Castle shoots her a swift look, the bewilderment on his face heartbreaking. "Am I - do I know who that is? Am I supposed to-"

"No, no," Kate promises. "I don't know who Joey is either. Javi, who are you talking about?"

"Well, actually you do. Remember that punk kid we picked up two years ago? He'd been working with a DJ who'd gotten murdered after a party, turns out Joey was stealing-"

Castle snaps his fingers. "Monster!"

Kate frowns, stepping towards her husband, but Javi nods and fist bumps Castle. "That's him. Ain't no monster. Joey Malone."

"What about Joey Malone?" Kate interrupts, recalling the kid now. She crosses her arms over her chest, still near the door, while Castle is standing nearly at the couch, smiling at Esposito. But Kate has a terrible feeling there's nothing to be smiling about.

"Joey came to me," Esposito says, hanging his head. "Back in October. He told me there'd been a white guy in Washington Heights asking about you, Beckett. I thought your mom's case, and I shut him up. But. It's not that. It's the same guy in the Mercedes."

"What?" Castle croaks.

"Why didn't you _say_ something?" Kate hisses, jerking forward to confront Espo. Shut him up? About her _mother's case_?

"I've been on this kid for two years, Beckett. He's a punk, comes right down to it, despite me in his life. I figured he was trying to take us for a ride." Javier rubs the back of his neck and Kate falls silent, all of her words gone, completely blown open with it. "His fifteen minutes, you know? He was talking about your mom."

"Her mom's case. What's that have to do with this?" Castle looks like he can't breathe all of the sudden, and Kate diverts her attention from Espo long enough to take a half-step towards him. But he backs up. "Asking about Kate. This guy - Joey heard this guy asking about Kate?"

"Which is why it didn't connect," Espo said. "I thought it would be Bracken again, but that's been _dealt_ with, and Beckett, I swear." He was staring at her now, hard-jawed and yet also vulnerable. "I swear, I was just trying to keep the load off your shoulders. I was looking into it myself and getting nowhere, but that's because I was looking at it like it was about Bracken. And it's not. It's about Castle."

Her mother's case? Castle is about her mother's case?

"Wait. How do you know it's the same guy?" It's Castle who takes over questioning, the _real_ question here. "How can you possibly know it's the same guy in the Mercedes? That photo is so bad that all you can see are pixels."

"Yeah," Espo said, but he was shaking his head and looking at _her. "_The screen grab we took has the guy pumping gas - with his left hand."

"So?" Castle says. There's a hint of desperation in his voice that has Kate's hand trembling for an instant; she wants, very badly, to be right at his side, to prop him up. "What does his left hand have to do with anything?"

"Joey was talking about a scary white guy in Washington Heights with a fake hand - mechanical he said, but back then I thought he was blowing it up. And his source was a meth head - so I took it with a grain of salt. Only now we got this guy driving the Mercedes, and he reaches out _across_ his body to swipe his card, his left hand down to pump. Only reason to reach across your body is because your other hand is injured or-"

"A prosthetic," Kate finishes hollowly. A man with a fake hand. She's completely lost. How does that relate to her mother's case?

If Bracken sent someone to wreck her husband, to kill Castle-

"When I saw that, Beckett, I swear, I went straight to the manager of the Stop-N-Go-"

"It was a Citgo," she mutters. Bracken sent someone to kill Castle? She's finding it hard to breathe.

"No, the manager at Joey's job is at the Stop-N-Go. _He's_ the one who had the run-in with our man. I took a sketch artist down there with me - the second you two left - and this is what he came up with. Give or take a few details."

Esposito pulls a piece of paper out of his back pocket and unfolds it twice, holds it up to Beckett.

But it's Castle who surges forward, snatches the sketch from Espo's hands.

"Oh, God. This is the man who kidnapped Alexis."

* * *

Esposito has cleared out - fast - and now it's just the two of them, Kate stalking him around and around, and she knows it, but she can't help prowling.

"_Tell_ me you remember what was going on in January of 2014," Kate stresses. "Last year. Tell me you remember that."

But Castle is still shaking his head, pacing the living room, his back turned away from her. She sent Esposito to the 12th to drag up everything they had on the murder and Alexis's kidnapping, but Castle still won't face the real issue.

"Rick," she insists.

"I _know_."

"Your _father_ was here in January." She scrapes a hand through her hair; she could strangle him. He's being so close-minded. "That man followed your father straight to you, Castle. After that whole fiasco - after he _used_ us, this guy in the sketch followed Jackson Hunt _straight to you._"

"Gregory Volkov," he says quietly.

"You have a _name?_" Kate seethes.

"That's all I have," he promises, and there's desperation in his voice that she doesn't like. It pulls her up short, makes her close her eyes, reassess.

"Volkov," she repeats. "Tell me. Castle, tell me what's going on because this doesn't make sense to me."

"I told you," he says hollowly. "I don't remember."

"I _know_ that. Tell me about Volkov." She didn't think she'd be interrogating her own husband about this. She's always trusted that he would explain, that he would bring it to her the second it came to him. "Tell me _why_ he's in Washington Heights asking about me."

"I guess because my father was here," he admits. He looks shame-faced, agitated.

"And Volkov is what? - his nemesis? This isn't a comic book, Castle. Why was he asking about my _mother_?"

"I don't know," he suddenly bellows.

Kate steps back, caught off-guard, but Castle rubs both hands down his face and growls, not looking at her. She has to get it together, figure this out, because it's true - unfairly true - he doesn't know. He won't know. He doesn't remember.

He's not going to be able to help her. "Okay," she says slowly. "We have a name. That's more than we had, Rick. That's a lot. I'll track down the Mercedes, the boys and I will go after known associates, I can-"

"No!"

She pauses, lifting her eyes to look at him, really look, and she sees a wild and desperate fear clawing out of him. Kate comes straight for him, wrapping her arms around his torso only to feel the frantic thud of his racing heart.

"Castle," she soothes. "Castle, it's okay. I'm a cop, remember?"

"God," he croaks. "Don't - don't - don't tell them."

"Who?" she murmurs. "Tell what? Espo and Ryan are on this with me; Captain Gates has made this top priority. We'll get this guy. We can get him."

He's _shaking_, and she slides her arm up his back and palms the nape of his neck, hoping to ease him down. He drops his forehead to her shoulder and takes gulping breaths.

He's not okay.

This fake-hand man, Volkov, he did something to Castle, and her husband is afraid, and that is _not_ okay.

"I'm going to get him, Rick. He can't do this to you, to us."

"No, don't-" His words are a gasp, but she clutches him tighter, her arms banded around him as if she can hold him together.

"He can't do this to _me_," she says fiercely into his ear. "We didn't come all this way to have it ruined by your father's damn enemies."

"He kidnapped Alexis," Castle scrapes out.

"And _you_," she insists. "We can't let him get away with it. We're not going to let your father's enemies use us as some kind of revenge."

"He had the walkie-talkie."

"What?" she gasps. "Do you remember-"

"No, back when - when we got Alexis out of France. It was a ruse - capture me as a ruse. My father put explosives in the walkie-talkie and Volkov confiscated it and pushed me into the room with Alexis and then it blew up."

"It blew up," she states numbly. What is he talking about?

"The walkie-talkie blew up in his hand."

"Oh." Oh, his _hand_. The fake hand is because of that? "Is that - that was when you MacGyvered the lock on the cage?" He's told her this story, but she realizes now that he's told her pieces. That he kept some back to cover his father's tracks, protect him. "Or did Hunt do that?"

"He was the noisy diversion at the front. I was the one who grabbed Alexis and ran. That's what he said. Grab her, put your heads down and run."

"You got her out of there," she reminds him. She feels like he needs it, a reminder - everyone is safe, they're all here. "You got her out."

"I thought Volkov would be dead."

"Why?"

"Because my father isn't."

What did she call Volkov? Nemesis. Sounds like that's exactly what's going on here. And now she's been dragged into it somehow, with her mother's case in Washington Heights - but that's over. That's been over; it shouldn't matter. Was he trying to get to her, back in January, trying to find her weaknesses?

"Castle." She cups his face with her hands, drawing back to look at him. "When the boys get everything pulled from records, I'll go back to the 12th. I'm going to get this guy. Do you hear me?"

"No, don't-" He grunts and closes his eyes. "This is too dangerous."

"Have some faith," she whispers. Her mouth touches his then, finally, a brush of a kiss. "You said it first, Rick. What's a great story without some obstacles to overcome?"

His arms are suddenly tangling around her, an embrace so bone-crushing that her breath leaves her in a rush. But she cradles his head where he buries it into her neck, holds him close, because in a few minutes, she's going back to work and she's getting Volkov.

But then his words come to her, close at her ear, and she shivers to hear them:

"If it was Volkov, then where's my father in all this? Why hasn't he said anything? Why hasn't he explained?"


	16. Chapter 16

**Learn to Have Been**

* * *

_November 2014_

**X**

Thanksgiving was different this year; Jenny had warned her parents that dinner was off the table because Kevin had been insistent they were doing it with _his_ family - his precinct family. It'd been the first time he'd ever made a decision unilaterally, not even asking her, but instead of being upset (well, only a little upset), she'd been honored.

Rick and Kate had asked them over for Thanksgiving. So of course they went.

The loft was stuffed like a turkey with people. Sara Grace was mewling on her mother's shoulder at the stimulation, but Jenny couldn't bear to be left out of the conversation, so she just bounced the girl and ate with one hand while she talked and laughed. Kevin took their daughter halfway through dinner, and though the table was long and people were shoulder to shoulder, it didn't matter.

It was kind of amazing. A great place to be thankful - these were the people who had saved her husband from a burning building, saved him for his daughter.

And the food was even better because the only thing Jenny had actually made herself was the corn pudding. Any holiday in which she didn't have to oversee the process getting all of the meal to the table was a good holiday.

They broke up the formal setting for dessert. Rick looked so pleased with himself as he passed out slices of pie: apple, pumpkin, pecan, chocolate. Jenny took her own piece and sank deep into the couch, enjoying the freedom of being both baby-less at this moment and also in someone else's house for Thanksgiving.

Esposito had taken up with Kev on the couch with her, shoulder-punching involved, Lanie was arguing shoes with Alexis, Mr Beckett was in an armchair, hunched over a pice of apple pie and nodding at Kate. "Just like your mother's."

Martha was flitting from one group to the next, but she eventually settled near Alexis up at the bar and seemed to want to preside over the pie selections.

"The pumpkin is delicious," Jenny called out.

Rick turned around, beaming at her. "I made it.

"No way," Kevin piped up. "You made this? Thought the short term stuff was on the fritz."

Jenny elbowed him hard, but Esposito chuckled and leaned in, did that stupid hand shake thing that looked like the baby sign language sign for 'more' but whatever. Bird-feeding? Boys were stupid. She was so glad Sarah Grace was a girl; girls she could manage.

"Yeah, on the fritz, but I managed. Only had to ask what came next-"

"Like forty times," Kate put in, rolling her eyes. "He asks a lot of questions."

The whole group laughed, a tender thing though, softening it for Rick's sake. He was still looking proud of his contribution to their Thanksgiving dinner, and he sat down with his pie in the big armchair beside Jim's.

Kate had a slice of Rick's pumpkin as well, and she sat on the arm of his chair, leaning towards him. He settled a hand at her back as if to stabilize her for just a moment, and then he picked up his fork.

"I'm sure I annoyed the crap out of Kate, but she was very patient." He was smiling still, fork digging in, and he shoveled a bite into his mouth.

"I've resigned myself to the constant questions," she said, lifting an eyebrow at him.

"And so have I," Rick shot back. He had a snarky look on his face when he said it, and Jenny didn't quite understand the undercurrent, but Kate pressed her lips together.

"He's talking about my constant questions," Kate answered for the group, but her cheeks were stained a little pink. "Which is - I suppose - the best segue I'm going to get for this."

And then she was setting her pie plate down on the floor with such careful precision, slowly, and standing up from the chair. Rick wasn't entirely paying attention, but he glanced up at her in time to see Kate take off her engagement ring.

The loft went silent. Jenny cut her eyes to Alexis and Martha, but they both looked stunned.

Kate leaned in and took Castle's pie from him, put it on the side table, and then reached for his hand.

"One question I know you're sick of hearing," she murmured, almost too quiet for any of them to hear. "Sick of me asking you _why_. Why can't we, why won't you. So forget the why, Rick. I'm not asking _why_ any more."

The room was holding its breath when Kate unfurled his hand and placed her ring in his palm. And then she closed his fingers over it.

"Kate," he rasped.

"Instead of why," she said, and then sank to her knees before him. "Will you - _will _you, Richard - Alexander - Castle - will you marry me?"

"Kate," he breathed. Rick surged to his feet, grabbing Kate up with him, crushing her into his embrace. "Yes, of course, yes."

He said more, something into the fall of Kate's hair that made her laugh and bury her face into Rick's neck, but no one else heard it. "Finally," she choked out. "Now give me my ring, Castle."

**X**


	17. Chapter 17

**Learn to Have Been**

* * *

_February 2015_

"Beckett," she answers. She knows it's the ME's office because of caller ID, but she can't understand why. The only open case she cares about is Castle's, and thank God, no dead bodies are attached to that.

Yet.

She finds Volkov, that might change.

"Kate, I think you need to see this."

"Lanie?"

"Just - just get down here. Get down here because this is _not_ making sense."

The line clicks and goes dead and Kate pulls the phone back from her ear and stares at it, stunned by Lanie's call, by the strange shake to her voice. Lanie never freaks out over the dead - well, not unless for very good reason.

Like when Tyson started killing their look-alikes.

Kate shoves her phone into her back pocket and snags her keys from the desk. She doesn't see Espo or Ryan anywhere, but they could still be out canvassing Washington Heights, interviewing the meth kid, the Stop-n-Go manager. Could be.

But maybe they're at the morgue, called in on something.

Look-alikes. Is that what this is? Are they coming back to Tyson? She just doesn't know. The guy in Washington Heights is Volkov, according to Castle. But that _doesn't_ mean the guy who ran Castle off the road and kidnapped him is the same person. There is a dearth of information on this case, and Kate has spent entirely too long circling the wagons, staying close to home, unwilling to distract either of them from Castle's recovery. To chase down guesses or random hotline tips? Not worth it.

Maybe that's been a mistake.

She hasn't been doing her job. She's been afraid to look, afraid of what might have been done to him to cause this kind of damage, certain that if she turns aside to the investigation, she'll never get back to him.

She'll never get _him_ back.

It's not just the loss of certain memories or ways of doing things; it's not that the jokes disappeared for a while or that she's stuck making her own coffee. No. She thought he would leave. For her own good, or for some other stupidly noble grand gesture, because at the beginning, it was looking like he'd leave her. He refused to jump back into the wedding, he was reluctant to touch her, he didn't even want her to know how therapy was going.

That's changed, of course. It's not like that now, and she figured out why he was acting that way - protecting her, protecting himself from her rejection, embarrassed by all of it, afraid he lost some key knowledge of _her_ - but it means she hasn't spent time on this case like she should have.

And now she's playing catch up and she doesn't like it.

Too many variables. Volkov, Lanie's cryptic call from the morgue, the hints of Tyson's fingerprints all over this.

The whole drive to the ME's office, she's berating herself for not paying more attention to this case, to _Castle_ when his nightmares drove them both awake, when he shied away from answering before that too-convenient _I don't know._

He might truly not know; she doesn't think he's lying. This winter has been about accepting that he might never get those things back - never make her coffee quite like he did on those too-early mornings, with the heart in the foam - never be confident enough about writing that he can sit down and churn out the next chapter and then come back to her ready to play.

It's okay; she really does believe they'll be okay even if it never happens. She just wishes she paid more attention to the _details._

Kate parks in the ME's lot at the back of the building, the echoing multi-level garage that chills her to the bone. Her heels click and grind into the cement as she walks quickly, drawing her coat tighter around her body, and she hits the elevator nearly at a run, jabbing her thumb into the call button more than once.

Finally the doors open, but a coterie of dark-suited men shoulder their way past her from inside, heading out, a gurney between them with a black body bag.

And Kate knows, with that cascading numbness of shock, that these men have whatever it is Lanie called her about. That _this_ is why she called.

Her phone rings. She answers, turning away from the now-empty elevator, jogging back to shadow the men in suits - nine of them, two pushing the gurney with the body, the wheels clacking and spinning against the parking garage's third level concrete.

"Beckett!"

"Lanie. What's going on?" she says quickly, trying to keep her voice down. "I'm in the parking garage and I got shoved aside by some guys in suits-"

"Feds," Lanie hisses. "They came here about five minutes after I called you. Confiscated the body."

"_What_ body? Lanie, what body? What case is-"

"The John Doe. Remember? Badly decomposed, Central Park-"

"I remember," she says, slowing down now. John Doe has nothing to do-

"His hand, Beckett. Javi was telling me about how this fake-hand guy was out in Washington Heights, that the sketch-"

"Wait. Wait, the fake hand?" Pieces are coming together now, connections being made.

"John Doe - from Central Park? - he was missing his right hand. Remember? At the time, I thought wild animals, but I hadn't finished the prelim-"

"It wasn't wild animals," Kate realizes, jogging after the men in suits now.

"It wasn't. Someone knew enough to rip that prosthetic off of him, and then do some careful cutting - I was thinking bolt cutters or-"

"You know for sure our John Doe had a prosthetic?"

"There are signs on the bones, signs of grinding where he had one that maybe didn't fit right at first. It's hard to get right, very hard, constant adjustments. But I couldn't be sure. I sent X-rays in to be analyzed - months ago, Kate - but only _now_ do those black suits show up to take him?"

Because Volkov is involved in this, because she and her team are making noise on this case, finally getting somewhere. If it's the Feds, then it's the CIA, she has no doubt of that. Maybe even NSA. Last time Castle's father showed up, he wasn't exactly in the middle of a by-the-books mission. She doesn't know _what_ to think of him or his loyalties.

Time to find out.

"Excuse me," she calls out. "Excuse me. Detective Beckett of the NYPD. Identify yourselves."

The one at the tail end does actually turn to look at her; they've already started loading the body bag into the back of what looks like a refrigerated white storage truck. She jogs up to the one waiting, angles her hip towards his scrutiny, proving her own credentials, the badge flashing, but she gets nothing back.

"I'm here for _this_ body," she says. "I need you to take it back into the ME's office so that I can continue my case."

The guy puts his hands on his hips and shifts - not subtly - so that he's blocking her from the rest of them. "I'm sorry, Detective, but that's not going to happen."

"I know who he is," she says, recklessly. No pain, no gain. She has to have that body. "I know his identity, we have a-"

"Not happening." The man turns away from her, completely dismissive, but she darts around him, sliding her body between him and his team.

"I won't take no for an answer," she says. Her voice is like ice. "I need that body. I have reason to believe this man abducted my partner and held him for-"

"We know what he's done." The man steps around her, but she shuffles to the side and they collide. "Detective. Step aside."

"Whatever your issue is with him, I need that body. I need those forensics." Does she dare bring Castle's father's name into this? "I have an open case-"

"This is a national security matter. Now step aside, Detective, before I call your Captain."

"Call my Captain," she shoots back. "Do it. She'll back me up."

"Not when _my_ boss calls her boss. She won't thank you for that. Now step aside, or I will remove you."

She doesn't doubt he'll do it, but she stands her ground, completely unwilling to let the body go. It's Volkov; she _knows_ it's Volkov, the missing hand, the signs of a poorly-made prosthetic. Body dumped in Central Park, and _where_ is Jackson Hunt?

She has to know where Volkov has been, what happened to him, what happened to her _husband._

Suddenly the man is reaching out and gripping her wrists; the truck is starting. She doesn't hesitate, rotates her forearms out in a circle, breaking the man's hold, twisting out. He recovers, but he simply makes himself a wall, keeping her from the truck, knocking her back when she moves forward.

She dodges to one side, but his body is there, a teeth-rattling jolt as they collide even as the truck backs out of the space. She makes a desperate move to dart around him, to stop the truck, but he reaches out and gets her around the waist, sweeps her up before she can move.

The truck is going, rumbling towards the exit ramp, and she's digging her elbow into his ribs, kicking his shin like nothing more than a petulant child.

The truck is gone. Truly gone. She doesn't even know if they're NSA or CIA.

The suit puts her gently down on her feet, and then he straightens his jacket, doesn't look at her.

"Apologies, Detective. But it's a matter of national security."


	18. Chapter 18

**Learn to Have Been**

* * *

_December 2014_

_**X**_

"Have you given any more thought to what we talked about last time?"

"She asked me to marry her," Rick Castle blurted out.

Dr Burke smiled at him, crossed his ankle over his knee. "Well, that's one way to solve a problem. And you said?"

"Yes," Rick gasped at him. "Of course. Yes."

"Of course," he echoed, not making it a question - per se.

"I hadn't realized," Rick said, shoulders hunching up. "You know how she is."

"For the sake of this session, _no_, I do not know how she is. You're supposed to tell me."

"She plays it close to the vest."

Dr Burke clasped his hands over his knee, lifted an eyebrow. "You believe that was the obstacle?"

"I..." Rick tilted his head. "I think so?"

"Because Kate Beckett is a woman who holds her own counsel. Even with you."

"Ah, not... okay. Not exactly. She does, I mean, don't get me wrong, she likes to have it all figured out before she broaches the subject, but no. I guess she's been pretty vocal about what she wants."

"So..."

"So... the obstacle was me?" But of course, Rick was still figuring that out. Mostly, Dr Burke had just been listening these last few months, because Rick Castle could definitely talk. Kate Beckett was so different in that regard, and it had been interesting to see where the two intersected.

"Why do you think the obstacle was you?" he guided gently. Oh, no mistaking it, Rick had been the obstacle. But Rick had to figure that out for himself.

"Because I - don't remember everything. I can't be that guy; I don't know how to be that guy and she's already so - she's - we had a long, hard road just admitting we wanted something more."

"How is that related? Your long road and your memory confusion." Dr Burke hoped he hadn't been too leading there.

But Rick Castle's mouth dropped open and he blinked. "Oh. It is related? I think - I guess _I _think it's related. Someone _else_ made that long road with Kate, not this person, not me. It's not me who did that work-"

"Do you remember the work?"

The man frowned, attempted to smooth it out again. "Yes."

"Well."

"Well what?"

"How would you define yourself? What man are you if not that man with those experiences?"

"Kinda deep there, doc." Rick gave him that flash of charming smile, but Burke, of course, did not bite.

He waited.

And waited.

And Rick squirmed, fidgeted, scratched his neck, and finally huffed and answered. "I define myself by - fatherhood - being my daughter Alexis's father. My writing - the career and the talent both. My partnership with Kate - which, professionally, hasn't been there lately so I guess that's a problem too."

Dr Burke opened his mouth, thinking that Castle was done, but the man went on:

"And my ability to make her laugh."

His eyes fell away and his voice drifted, and while that litany had been interesting - especially the last - Dr Burke was sure it enfolded the deeper problem. So he took one of those covers and tried to expose it. "Your writing," Burke started. "Tell me about that."

"I haven't tried it."

"Why not?"

"What if it's not there when I do? What if I don't even like it or my fingers don't remember how to type? What if it's different - what if I haven't got the imagination for detective fiction, or the - the impetus?"

"You mean the muse."

Rick frowned furiously, pressed his hands down on his knees, chin practically tucked in. Defensive but listening.

Burke crossed his hands over his lap. "Do you think it circles around to that long, hard road? If you can't write, then you're not the man she fell in love with, not the _writer_ who worked for her, to prove yourself to your muse. Do you think you've somehow started telling yourself that?"

Rick was still looking down, a fringe of bangs hiding his eyes, face in shadows due to the long afternoon light coming in the blinds.

Dr Burke let him sit, jotted down a few notes on his pad. They'd been tiptoeing around the issue for about six weeks, but Burke had been carefully testing the other support pillars of his identity; he was certain they would hold.

This one needed to topple.

He waited and then he said it, carefully. "Kate Beckett isn't your muse."

Rick sucked in a breath, head jerking up to look at him.

"She's a woman whom you are in love with, partnering with, sharing a life with. She _does_ inspire you. That's healthy. Perfectly healthy. But that goddess ideal in your head - that has to go, Rick."

"Goddess ideal?"

"Setting her superior to yourself. Comparisons which say, You're not good enough. You're not the man you were. You don't rate. Those are lies you're telling yourself - and assuredly for longer than the accident. But the accident and your memory confusion have brought them to the fore, exacerbated what might have resolved itself given time. Marriage has a way of bringing our spouse down off the pedestal we've built for them."

"Oh." Rick's face was utterly blank, but Burke thought he saw recognition there. He had figured quite a lot of the problems associated with those first two marriages came from this. Rick seemed to see that too. "What does this have to do with my writing?"

"The goddess perhaps informs your writing, but Kate doesn't. Her story was the germ for a character; her life has given you fodder. But you know it's not about the books any more."

Rick let out a little chuckle, which Dr Burke had definitely not been expecting - though maybe he should have been, considering this man's coping mechanisms.

"I'm glad you can laugh about it," he said.

"Oh, it's just - you don't know how many people have said that to me."

"Ah. That it's gone so far beyond mere plot development?"

"Yeah. And I do know that. It's an actual life we have together. We _are_ getting married, you know. Kate has plans already - she's telling me it's all she wants for Christmas this year, so yeah, I'm doing everything I can to get us there."

"That's perfectly fine," Dr Burke said. "Would you like to go back to the writing?"

"Well, it's what I _am_."

"I meant," Dr Burke smiled. "Would you like to talk about it. Since you changed the subject twice - trying to blindside me with your impending nuptials." Like a boy hoping his father would be proud of him. More issues, but Rick seemed to be handling those as well as could be expected. "Distraction. You're quite good at it."

Rick gave a crooked smile. "I am, huh?"

"Yes. You know that. It's one of your protective instincts. Charming misdirection - a magic trick. Though, I will say, I'm glad you said yes. You deserve happiness with her. You _both_ deserve it. Kate has worked long and hard for this." Dr Burke stopped; there were things Kate had okayed in the beginning, earnest as she was to _fix_ things for Rick. That was Kate, of course. _Give me something to fix it._ "You do know that she worked hard for _herself_, right? Not you, Rick. You do not carry the responsibility of that. She worked to be more - to be the person she wanted to be. Not to be who _you_ wanted her to be."

"I know."

"In the same way, you cannot work to only be what she wants."

"Oh."

"Do you see?"

"I - guess so."

"Work to be more, to be the person _you_ want to be. I believe that if you _were_ a writer, you are probably still a writer, barring any permanent and debilitating brain damage. Though the scans have looked good. So I suggest you sit down at the computer and you write."

"Easy for you to say."

Dr Burke chuckled softly. "Yes, well. Just remember. She has worked to be more than a muse. And succeeded. Which means that you, Rick, can claim to be more than just her writer. It goes both ways."

**X**

"Oh, here he is," the woman in front of Marka sighed. She raised her voice and called out. "Rick."

Marka Duvall, wedding planner to the stars, smoothed her hands over her planner as she turned her head to follow her client's line of sight. The man who had walked in the door just now unwound the scarf from his neck and walked towards them. He had a nice smile, indulgent maybe, which was good for the budget, and definitely in love, which was good for Marka's sense of professional ethics.

She really wanted her clients to be in love; it made things so much easier. They usually were willing to spend, and a lot more willing to okay her suggestions.

They just wanted to get married.

"This is Marka Duvall," the woman said. "Marka, this is Rick Castle."

He was so broad, she thought, shaking his hand as he took the empty seat before her. Broad and tall, and his eyes were blue as he smiled. They were a striking couple. "Nice to meet you. Kate has been telling me that you've had some bad luck earlier this year."

His smile grew tight. He shot Kate a quick look and _she_ shook her head, a jerk of denial that Marka found very interesting. She didn't know what _that_ was all about, but it made him relax.

"Yes, our first wedding was - well, it was perfect until it wasn't. I didn't even get to see Kate in her dress." His eyes were all for her.

"We will definitely fix that," Marka rushed in. They were looking a little maudlin. She wondered what exactly had happened. The woman had only said that it had been canceled due to a family emergency. "And the date you were thinking...?"

"Around Christmas." Rick turned his head back to her, a piercing blue gaze. "Actually, December 21st. It's the shortest day of the year. Winter solstice. Can we do that?"

She was completely dismayed. "December - you do realize that today is the first?"

"Yes. Look at that, you have twenty days," Rick said enthusiastically. "I know you can do it, Marka. I've heard great things. Wedding planner to the stars."

She closed her mouth, heat flushing her cheeks, wishing for once that her business cards weren't sitting right there on her desk, wishing the framed article and photo with the 20-point Courier title wasn't right over her shoulder on the wall - all proclaiming the same thing, _wedding planner to the stars_.

"Twenty days is... just not a lot of time for a wedding the two of you _deserve_," she came out with.

"Money isn't a problem," Rick said, swinging his gaze back to her. "And Kate and I are pretty flexible about this one. We did all the things we were supposed to last time and it didn't bring us a lot of luck. So we're going to give you a few parameters and you run with it."

Marka swallowed. "How - how many guests?"

"Small," Kate answered quickly. Her hand covered his on his knee and Marka could actually see her squeezing hard. "Maybe a hundred people. A church somewhere - whoever has the 21st empty on their calendar."

"Oh," Marka said in dismay. They were really going to do this. "One hundred guests. A church available this close to Christmas." Impossible. "What - else?" She braced herself for complete unreasonableness.

"Just each other," Kate smiled. "We've got that. You just do what you can to pull it off. I had everything else before, but I didn't have him. What's the point?"

Marka let out a long breath, surprised. No bridezilla this one - at least not yet. She looked relaxed, the diamond was _huge_, and the man at her side was really only looking at her.

They both leaned forward as if they were going to leave her to it. Kate had already given her a generous deposit - more than Marka's usual - and she'd explained it would be this month, but she had really not expected-

"Do you have _colors_?" Marka cried out.

Kate looked at Rick; he looked back at her. They shrugged.

"Everyone's going to wear what they have," Rick said. "Some are keeping with the original plans, some are not."

"Just not Christmassy," Kate winced, wrinkling her nose. "Green is fine. Red is fine, but not together."

"No, no, never," Marka murmured. She pressed her hand to her forehead. They didn't even have _colors_. This was all on her shoulders; she was going to have to make it up out of wholecloth.

Though she had a sudden vision of a winter solstice wedding, the coldest, shortest day of the year, the moon rising, deer in the bare woods, red berries in the snow, silver and white.

"Oh, leave it all to me," she said, rising to her feet. "You're going to love it. You'll never even _know_ it was pulled together in twenty days."

**X**


	19. Chapter 19

**Learn to Have Been**

* * *

_February 2015_

She's left him at the loft alone.

Even after the body was stolen, she's left him _alone._

He isn't sure he should be alone; he isn't sure he can handle this. He's got things crowding in at the edges of his vision, a light that burns his eyes and the haunting voice asking questions.

He feels seasick.

But Kate has gone back to the precinct to chase down Volkov's body, and there's something important, something so very important that he should be remembering.

Of course, that's kind of a constant for him these days.

_I keep making the mistake of thinking he's family. But he's not. You are._

He remembers that; he remembers what Kate is to him, what Jackson Hunt is not, but the fact that this particular bit of dialogue comes back to him again and again, as if on loop, has to be significant.

Dr Burke would say that his calling it 'dialogue' instead of conversation means something pretty significant too. Castle already knows that - he thinks in narrative. He cannibalizes his life and the lives of those around him for the meat of his books and he's never been repentant about it. He's always been the ride-along, even in his own life; his brain just works that way.

But Kate is the first person to demand he show up and take some responsibility. The first one to _expect_ greater things from him, and the first person he's _wanted_ to be better for.

He doesn't want her going after that body. It seems - he can't tell _why_, exactly. She's a cop; she's smart and resourceful and Volkov wasn't Bracken, but he _was_ a mastermind spy, and maybe that's all it is. A dead spy, but a dead spy has resources and connections, a dead spy still has people who will might revenge or who might be carrying out nefarious plans.

Castle feels like this time there isn't a net.

That's the problem. No net. They're a high-wire act and this time there is no safety net down at the bottom.

Why? What's changed?

He doesn't _know_. He doesn't have answers; the memories are just gone.

But he's not an idiot, and he has been - until recently - a kind of junior police detective, and Beckett's partner, just without the gun. So he _can_ do this; he can do this from home if she won't let him into the 12th with her.

Castle camps out in his office and opens the laptop, calls up the display screen that used to house her mother's case. He wiped all that clean ages ago, had her back in his arms and leading him to bed soon after - so that all the bitterness that used to come with turning on the monitor now just makes him smile.

A small smile, but there. It's a start.

He stares at the welcoming blue display screen on his wall, lost for a moment, and then he turns to his laptop and starts making notes. Case notes, detailing everything he does remember, everything he caught on the murder board in that moment of striding into the bullpen, everything Esposito said about the black Mercedes and Joey Monster Malone and the man with the fake hand.

He gets to work and he finds himself theorizing with his word document, laying it out like a story, answering the questions he doesn't know with pure conjecture based on the plot of the scene unfolding.

He's writing.

He's _writing_.

He's not just solo-theorizing, he's writing this scene.

Volkov is here, his father is here, Castle is here. There's confusion, a rush of action and then a startling denouement, and through it all, the interrogation plays background in his head, an insidious voice, a bright spotlight that peels back his character's eyelids, pounds into his skull.

_My wife is gone; your wife is next._

He's shaking when he comes out of the fugue state, he's sweating so hard that his thighs stick to the contoured office chair and he's left damp impressions on the keys.

Castle jerks to his feet and yet - yet - he saves his work automatically, even as his fingers twitch and his brain shies away from reading what he's word-vomited.

He stumbles through the office and out into the living room, shocked to discover the long, gray shadows outside the window. Nearly five-thirty, and Beckett isn't back, and his words, his scenes, his novel is back there with answers he doesn't have the guts to read over.

He knows, but he doesn't know. It might be pure conjecture, might be his worst nightmares that he always wakes from without remembering, might simply be his next work.

It's not Nikki Heat. It's not Rook under that light with his head pushed back in the chair and the excruciating headache.

It's not a mystery, not a thriller. It's serious, it's grounded solidly in real life, it's the cusp of something not his own that he's yet channeled straight to the page for the last four hours without moving.

Castle stares out the windows, the twilight leaking in the windows and stretching through the living room, casting the place in shadows.

He has to go. He has to see if this is real or if it's just speculative fiction.

* * *

When Kate unlocks the door to the loft, she feels the weight settle heavily on her shoulders.

She carries the load; she knows it. She doesn't mind, because it means he doesn't have to, but it's getting to her. She's not sure she can face him right now, with another dead end, another disappointing goose chase.

No body. No body and there would have been _answers._

She's not sure she can tell him, again, _I've got nothing._

Kate closes the door behind her, keeping silent, not calling out, hoping to peel the day off by layers before she has to talk. Living with another person has been an adjustment, figuring out how to stave off her need for alone time so she can balance his needs with her own. But he's been working on it too; they know each other's signs. He'll have heard her, he'll be in the office, most likely, and since she's quiet, he'll get the picture and stay where he is for a few minutes, come out to find her once she's had her time. Right now, she's hoping to pour a glass of wine and kick her shoes off and sink into the couch and be nothing.

Kate sheds her bag and coat, leaves both at the table behind the couch, promising herself she'll pick them up later.

She hopes he's writing. Alexis reported to her a week ago that he was trying, that he was sitting at his computer when she came home, and Kate thinks it would be good for him to get back into it.

She slips into the kitchen and opens the wine cooler, runs her eyes over the labels. She works her head on her neck, still trying to decide, but nothing hits her. Nothing feels right for a night like this, clueless, out of luck, more questions than she can keep track of.

Volkov is dead. There's that at least. Whatever plan he put into place, though, whatever purpose he had for Castle, _that_ might still be ongoing. That's what gnaws at her.

Castle has dreams. Dreams of falling and he wakes with a shout, jerking the whole bed. He just shrugs and grins a little sheepishly and falls right back to sleep, but lately it's been dreams of the crash, the accident, dreams of fire. She can tell because with those he doesn't go back to sleep.

She sighs, heaviness in her lungs, and turns on her spot to glance towards his office.

It's unnaturally quiet. By now he would have been out here, looking for her. Looking to help.

Kate pauses, listening, but there is only the hum of appliances, the rumble of the heater kicking on.

Maybe he fell asleep?

Kate shuts the door to the cooling rack and takes a step towards the living room, thinking, thinking too much, still on the edge of paranoia when it comes to him.

And then she's moving faster, not even sure why, just walking quickly through the living room and bursting into his office.

Empty.

She doesn't hesitate, heads for the bedroom and the darkness beyond and she lifts her hand and flips on the light - if she wakes him, she wakes him - but she doesn't. He's not asleep, not even there.

Kate turns slowly in the doorway and glances over her shoulder to his study, the open bookshelves, the laptop left trustingly on the desk, but he's not here.

He's not here.

* * *

Kate's a detective, so when Castle doesn't answer his phone, she takes it as permission to snoop. Through his desk drawers, bedside table, closet, even in the cabinet under the kitchen counter where he keeps a stash of chocolate and sometimes other little treasures like he's a five year old. Nothing. She goes back to his office and puts a hand on her hip and tries his phone again.

Turned off, straight to voicemail.

She opens her Track My iPhone app, completely not thinking, before she realizes that Castle's phone isn't an Apple product, not linked to her own.

They're going to change that. Or figure out something comparable. She's getting him GPS tracked from here until eternity.

She scans the office and sees the laptop once more, sitting prettily on the desk, the lid still up.

All she has to do is tap a key on the keyboard and it wakes. She clicks his user icon and it doesn't even ask her for a password. She remembers, belatedly, that Castle took that off when he sat for four days in front of his laptop, unable to recall what his password was until desperation had him typing without thinking and blindly lucking into it.

No password protection means the last thing he saw on his screen is the first thing she sees.

She sits down heavily in his chair and stares at the word document. Stares at the words. Words. Pages of them, nearly six full pages judging by the counter at the bottom, and she presses a shaky hand to her mouth and can't believe just how forcefully it's hit her.

He needed this. She needed it. He's writing again.

Kate can't help reading it. She goes back to the beginning and starts with the first sentence, immediately engrossed.

And faintly aware, somewhere in her, that this scene is going to devastate her.

_The voice came first, insidious, rasping in the rocking darkness, the rich tones of the devil. "First they took my wife. Now I take yours. You're going to watch her die."_

* * *

Kate presses the phone into her ear but she loses reception the moment she jogs down into the subway station. With a bitten back curse, she heads briskly for the turnstiles, slaps her metro card at the reader, shoving on the bar. It gives with a protesting shriek, and she races for the long tunnel that leads to her line, goes down the escalator at a flat-out run.

She gets on the subway car a moment before the doors slam shut, but all she can do is sink back against the metal pole and try to catch her breath.

It's only a few stops before she has to switch lines, and late as it is, she's not sure if this line will keep running if she's not back before ten tonight. Is it going to be that late? She can't know for sure, doesn't know his state of mind, and after reading that scene he wrote, she's finding it more and more likely that he's lost it.

She called Dr Burke first thing, of course. Burke couldn't give her much, but he sounded concerned, asked that she call him the moment she found her husband. Still makes her feel sick in her guts just thinking of that normally-calm voice pitched into the lower register of grave concern.

Okay, not grave. Just professional concern.

Professional concern doesn't make her feel any better though.

She only thinks she knows where he would go. It's just a hope, a wish. It's only the site of their more infamous, life-changing moments, and they both know it. They've joked about it before, how a playground has always figured so largely in their life together - even before they were headed towards this, the playground has been their motif.

She used to think he was an overgrown child; she accused him of using the NYPD as his jungle gym, the funniest kid in school. And it was at a playground where she first saw him as a father and not just a playboy, as a dad with his daughter's adoring trust and little hand in his, mother and father and nanny in one.

She lets out a breath when she switches trains, finally on the line that will take her to the park near the big chain bookstore where he signed her novel - both times. He doesn't even know that yet. That first book burned when her apartment blew up, and it's just never come up again.

Things she needs to tell him, all these things she's still not said. How could she have _still_ been putting it off? She _married_ him, and yet he doesn't know she stood in line for his signature all those years ago.

He doesn't know she received a genuine smile that reached his eyes when he asked for her name, received an albeit fleeting notice from a man she thought, crazily, would know exactly how it felt to be _stricken _with grief. He would be the only one to truly understand her.

Well, she was wrong and she was right. He _does_ understand her, only one to truly see her. But Castle isn't like her; he's not the kind that carries grief like a weight. He's found a way to let it roll off his back, he chooses the silver lining despite the continuously threatening storm clouds. It's what kept him in her precinct; it's what wore her down; it's what buoys her now.

Whatever happened to him after that accident, whatever he remembers, it won't leave scars. Not on Castle, not Rick.

He's too good for that; he's better than her.

She's at the doors the moment the train slides to a stop at the subway platform, and she's the first one off, pushing past the huddle of people waiting to get on. She takes the stairs two at a time and races all the way up to the street level, faintly surprised by the diffused light when she gets there.

Clouds have rolled in to obscure the sky, and whatever moonlight there was tonight has been refracted across the horizon until the whole city appears silver. Nightglow.

It's going to snow, she thinks.

She hustles down the sidewalk, jaywalking when she gets close enough, just like she did that day she walked angrily away from him, thinking _you don't know what I've been through_ after she was shot, thinking he was justified in being angry, yes, but not in pressing so hard for more from her. She couldn't give him more; there was barely anything left of her.

_Josh was there_ he insinuated. _No, he wasn't_, she spat back, _we broke up_. And then this same jog across the street, only that time it was far busier, that time she thought it was better to lose than have to heal again.

Now she's at the playground before she can think too much more about their crooked path to get here, and her eyes scan the moon-licked hollows for the sight of her husband.

He proposed to her here when she called him to meet her for the big news. _I'm moving away from you and I won't ask you to follow._

Ask, ask, he said. Ask me to follow because I am the one man who will.

He always does. He follows her, he keeps doggedly following her, and she has no idea what she's done to deserve it.

_You're tall._

She grins to herself and rounds the monkey bars, darkness and cold sliding around her, a wind pushing at her hair and dissembling it. She can see the swings now; she can feel the crisp humidity to the air, the leaden weight of clouds overhead.

She can see where they used to sit, side by side, not quite together.

But Castle isn't there.

Kate walks all the way to the very swing where she sat and he proposed on his knee before her, but there's nothing, no one. The moon is hidden, but the park is empty.

Her fingers close around the freezing chain, and immediately the warmth is leached from her.

She came here because Castle would have.

But her husband...

she has no idea where he's gone.


	20. Chapter 20

**Learn to Have Been**

* * *

_January 2015_

**_X_**

"Is this completely irresponsible of us?" Kate sighed.

Alexis took a sidelong glance at her father who was still in high spirits, rearranging Kate's packing job of the two suitcases on the living room couch. The marriage had felt like such a rush this time, but the actual ceremony had been so beautiful. Surreal too, her father's second wedding to Kate, the first he'd made it to. But now his father was grinning and laying out neckties, disregarding the perfectly good blue stripes that Alexis had picked for him in favor of purple, a rather intense ocean blue, and a - was that actually paisley?

"No," she said finally. "He looks happy." It was an effort to admit it - that finally it seemed to be alright. Kate divined her meaning, because she wrapped an arm around Alexis and pulled her in. Slowly. Giving Alexis time to back off, she thought, which meant that Kate was more aware and more generous than Alexis had given her credit for.

"It's just the weekend," she was saying into Alexis's temple. "Well, three days. But I think your dad needs it."

"You probably _both_ need it," Alexis sighed. She made fists at Kate's back, hugging her - oh, wow, Kate was her step-mother. Had been for the last two weeks. A white and silver wedding under the stars and now Kate was her step-mother. "Just - can you - do you mind if..."

"What, Alexis?" Kate said, pushing back from the embrace but holding onto Alexis's arm with a gentling grip. Her eyebrows were knitting together, concern racing across her face. She did that lately, immediately assumed it was going to be another crisis to fix, and Alexis felt bad for that. She hadn't been very _kind_ to Kate, and when her father had gone missing after the accident, she'd been - she'd been a bitch. Emotional, unsupportive, accusing.

But she'd had good reason. And Alexis still didn't understand, not like Kate evidently did. She didn't understand why her dad kept choosing the 12th precinct over _her_. He was her _dad_, but she saw, she really did see, how hypocritical it was to demand her father release his apron strings and let her be free when she was unwilling to do the same to him.

He deserved, at the very least, three days.

"Alexis," Kate said urgently. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong. I just - lost him and I don't want to lose him again."

Kate's jaw dropped and for one sick, humiliating moment, Alexis saw the woman's face completely come undone.

Broken. Oh God, she'd broken Kate.

And then it was gone, and Kate was trying to smile one of those comforting things while she nodded and looked gravely at Alexis in a way that was supposed to indicate she had heard Alexis's concern and was going to address it.

But before Kate could say, _I will do everything I can_, Alexis rushed in to explain, feeling a little sick for doing that to her. "I mean - can you have him call me at night? It's childish to be tucked in bed, and it's not like it has to be at midnight or well, ten, I guess, since Dad's been going to bed early, but if I could hear his voice and-"

"Of course," Kate choked, suddenly crushing Alexis in a brisk, here-and-gone hug. She had a watery smile and no small amount of relief, but Alexis knew she had still scored a direct hit to Kate's - guilt? conscience? - and it was going to be a while before Alexis could make that up to her.

She hadn't meant to accuse; she was trying to be better than that. "Thanks, Kate. I know it's supposed to be your honeymoon. But I-"

"Castle won't - your dad - won't let me call it that," she said then, a flicker of amusement and her eyes trailing off to regard Alexis's dad. "He says this summer we'll do it right. So please, believe me when I say he's probably going to want to call you anyway, every night. He misses you when you're not here, you know."

Alexis nodded, but she recognized it was only half true. She didn't really want her father to miss her, not like that, not where it was a phone call every night. No. But she knew she had an issue here, knew it was the kidnapping and Paris and then her father's accident and disappearance. "I've been thinking for a little while now that I need to - um - get over this. But I - I need to talk to someone... else."

She couldn't quite admit that she'd rescheduled her last four therapy appointments and outright failed to show up on Monday.

Kate frowned. "Is something wrong with your therapist? She was highly recommended. After you were... kidnapped."

Alexis shifted. "She's nice. I - she's nice." She didn't know how to say this. "But she doesn't know you. Or really my dad either."

"But I've met her," Kate answered, looking bewildered. "Castle had me - I mean-"

"You met her?" Alexis echoed. "When?"

Kate was silent, obviously trying to figure out what the right thing to say was.

Alexis shook her head, waving it off. "I don't care - that's not a dealbreaker. I mean, because you're part of my family now - you _have _been. I understand why he asked you to. Dad wants us all to be - family," she finished lamely, wincing.

"Yeah," Kate answered, nodding slowly. Her eyes had gone back to Alexis's father and really, Alexis couldn't maintain a cool demeanor towards Kate when she looked at him like that.

Her father _had_ someone, and that was worth it. Worth the truth to make this family work. "I quit going," she blurted out. "I quit going to my therapist."

Kate turned back to her, eyes blank, face blank. Clearly, a judgment was going on in there, but Alexis tried to explain.

"Even if you have met her, she doesn't _know_ you. Or my dad. And so when I say things, or I'm upset, she just - she says, _Well, you're a kid and he's your parent_."

Kate was pressing her lips together like she had an urge to laugh, and okay, okay, it was a little funny. Sort of. Not really.

And then Kate's mouth twisted and she finally said, "You mean, you quit because your therapist doesn't know how your dad can be childlike sometimes, how you feel responsible for him. And that I'm a cop who drags him out into a bad and scary world, with no protection, leaving you - again - the only one who seems at all responsible."

Alexis felt her breath leave her in a rush.

Kate gave her a crooked smile. No, not even a smile. "It's possible I talk about you in therapy. It's possible your dad talks about you in therapy, and then it's even more likely our therapist turns around and tells us outright things we should know."

"Can he do that?" she gasped.

"Oh no, not the private stuff," Kate laughed. "There are obviously things we don't get to hear. Or need to hear. But we do talk about you. About trying to make this work despite the - the trauma we've all had."

Trauma? She was sick of it, sick of the feelings. Alexis sighed, shoulders dropping. At least she'd told Kate the truth. She hadn't wanted to explain to her dad, not while he was in the middle of being so happy, and somehow telling Kate at least made her feel - clean.

Confessing. As if to a parent.

"Alexis, would you see Dr Burke?"

Alexis gaped.

"Only if you're comfortable. He's not an adolescent psychiatrist. Oh, well, you're not an adolescent. I know that. I just mean - he's going to treat you like an adult. He will approach things with an adult's perspective and help you have an adult relationship with - um, I was going to say your dad, but that might not be entirely possible. At least with me you will."

Kate was grinning, a true and deep smile, and Alexis really did get it now. What Kate must see in Alexis's father, what she got from this, why it worked when everything said it shouldn't.

"And since I know him, and Rick knows him," Kate went on, some of that smile dimming but only in hesitation. "He's not usually doing family therapy - he's a cop's shrink, but he'd do it for me. He'd say it was part of my deal."

"Deal?" Alexis chuckled. It was nervous though, because she didn't know what that meant. Whose deal?

"The things I've had to work through. Because we're - family, right? And PTSD doesn't just go away. Anxiety and panic attacks. Those are - I'm sure you noticed. While your dad was missing."

Noticed _what_? "Panic attacks? No. I - no, I thought you were... very calm."

Too calm. Too reserved. Like ice. Impossible to talk to, impossible to believe Kate had cared at all, that stone face.

Which Kate was doing right now. Blank, total reservation. But it was dawning on Alexis what that really was, what it meant to be confronted with that steel-reinforced Kate Beckett.

Alexis had _read_ Nikki Heat; she should have figured this out sooner.

So instead of putting more stupid words out there, she just flung her arms around Kate and hugged her hard, like she ought to, like she would have done to her dad if ever her father had been so clearly lost and hurt and needing a hug. Because Kate was part of her dad's whole deal, too, and so was Alexis.

"Thank you. I'll make an appointment with him, if you really don't mind. To be an adult - would be good. Thank you, Kate."

"Of course," Kate husked. She sounded like she was on the verge, but Alexis didn't try to pull away to see her break. She knew better now. Kate wasn't built that way, Kate wasn't like Alexis, wasn't like Rick Castle.

The Castles were good for Kate. And Kate was good for them. _That_ was the deal.

**X**


	21. Chapter 21

**Learn to Have Been**

* * *

_February 2015_

Rick Castle tilts his head back and closes his eyes, the winter air like ice in his lungs. The slats of the park bench resist him, pushing back, a constant discomfort.

"Here you are," he hears. And then fingers comb through his hair and a body presses warm against his. He lifts his head and sees Kate bundled up in her coat, scarf around her neck, her hair wind-wild.

He forgot his coat. No wonder it's so cold.

"Hey," he says back, sighing. The winter trees are bleak out here, bare.

"Thought I'd lost you," she murmurs, her shoulder against his.

"No, never," he says automatically.

She smiles a little, but it fades too fast. "Been looking at every playground and swingset in Central Park," she says. "Just happened to see you sitting here."

"Swingset? Oh. It's not about you, Kate."

She flinches and only then does he hear how that sounded.

He takes her hand in his, but she shivers at the cold of his skin. Still he tries. "I meant - it's not a relationship thing. I'm not rethinking my marriage." He tries for a goofy smile but it falls flat. "This is something I had to do. Something for myself."

"Something you had to turn off your phone for?"

"Yeah," he scrapes out. "So they can't track it."

She stiffens.

"Not that I didn't want you to... I didn't think you were-" He shrugs, shakes his head. He can't feel his nose. Frozen solid. He didn't think she would be coming home so soon. Honestly, he's lost track of the time.

"I went home because the case is... dead in the water," she murmurs. "No body, no evidence."

Dead in the water. The phrase stirs a current in his darkness, nudging other things to the surface. He's been sitting here hoping, but instead he's only confirmed his worst fears. Dead in the water.

Still it churns up, unable to be forgotten.

"He's dead," he tells her, dropping her hand. He leans forward, elbows on his knees, head bowed. "He's dead, Kate."

"He is dead," she confirms. "He can't get you, no more looking over your shoulder, Castle. At least there's that."

"Not Volkov," Castle scrapes out. He presses his palm to the green wood of the park bench between his knees. "Not Volkov - but my father."

The silence echoes in the cold, and he can't seem to draw a deep enough breath. Like knives, all of it, and the words he wrote today at his desk make it worse. The interrogation, the darkness, the sick lurch of his head.

Kate's fingers slide over his thigh and around his elbow, hooking. "Why do you say that? You think Jackson Hunt is dead."

"He was there, and then he wasn't," Castle tries. "I don't - I don't know exactly. Pieces are slipping through, won't come up." He can feel winter in his blood.

"Castle," she whispers. "Why are you here?" Her fingers are stroking his elbow; he's so cold that he can't feel it. He thinks she's been talking, asking other questions, but this is the first one to really register.

So he tries to answer. "This is where we would meet. Where we met once," he corrects, shaking his head. When Jackson Hunt played him. "The benches here in Central Park." He takes a deep breath but the ice in his lungs is sharp. "I was hoping he'd come. He didn't. He won't. He's dead."

"You can't be sure of that," she murmurs. Her chin comes down to his shoulder and she leans against him. Warm comfort. He wraps his hand around her arm and draws her a little closer.

"I can be sure. Gregory Volkov is dead, isn't he? That was Jackson Hunt."

"There's no body - no evidence of that."

He sighs. "I don't need a body to know."

"Castle, that's supposition," she starts.

"It's not. It's memory."

Her fingers tighten on his elbow, her body suddenly hard where it meets his, and he turns his head to look at her. Just past her shoulder, he can see the leaden sky and the branches of trees cutting through the landscape.

"Memory?"

"I think," he sighs, shoulders drooping. "I started writing and it - spilled out. It was there in my fingers, I guess." He swallows, closes his eyes to keep it back. The air rubs his face raw with its chill. Muscle memory, that's what Beth the therapist called it, though he's pretty sure this isn't what she meant.

"I read what you wrote," Kate murmurs.

"Good." Then he doesn't have to repeat it.

"Is that why you wouldn't marry me?"

His jaw drops, the truth of it hitting him in a rush.

She pushes in closer, arm winding around his. "Because Volkov's wife was killed, and he was going after yours. He was going to make you watch. So in your head - if you weren't married, then he couldn't. It - it makes sense. If you were only remembering a few things, and that was - what stuck."

"I - I didn't think of that," he says. He stares at her, the narrow, sculpted lines of her cheeks and jaw, the golden brown of her eyes, warm even in the cold. Serious for him. Hurting for him. "That never occurred to me."

"Oh." She drops back against the bench, chewing her bottom lip, looking out across the trees. There are no chess players this time, no hopscotch, no children on the playground. The swings were abandoned hours ago. The cold has gotten unbearable, the clouds one uniform density across the sky, featureless.

He touches her arm, takes her hand. "But you're probably right. I have these dreams..."

"Of the crash, falling."

"Of fire," he corrects. "Flames. I used to think it was in the car - the car on fire."

"You didn't have any burns, Castle. When they found you."

"I guess because my dreams were about the accident, I assumed... but you're right. It wasn't the accident. It was that night in Paris. There were explosions. That's what I was dreaming about. Running through that place, the charges going off."

"Paris. Volkov." She turns into him, her knees pressing against his thigh, her eyes trying to connect with his. "You were dreaming about Paris."

"Trying to give me clues," he mutters. "My own damaged brain."

"Not so damaged," she smiles. Her lips glance across his cheek, cold as the air in Central Park.

"I just wanted to know if it was true. I texted the old number I had for him, but of course I didn't get a response. I came here, hoping he'd see it anyway and come. But he can't come if he's dead."

"Your father," she murmurs. She leans in and her hair is cold where it brushes his neck. "You think he rescued you from Volkov?"

"I know he did," he gets out. He rubs two fingers at his forehead, trying to stave off a headache from the cold. "He was there, Kate. I've got pieces of it, but I don't know the whole picture."

"He did that to Volkov then. Tried to dump him out here-"

"Do you know where Volkov's body was found?" he says, frowning now. Something more is trying to rise to the surface, like the triangle in a magic eight ball, trying to give him an answer. This whole conversation is dredging the darkest parts of him. Building theory on wisps.

"Not far from here, actually, off through the trees-" Kate gasps, sits up straight. "Jackson Hunt did that on purpose, didn't he? So that you'd know it was him."

"Maybe," he mutters. "I don't know. He was supposed to... he let me know, after Paris, that he was okay. But he hasn't now. Maybe because I'm jumbled up and I wouldn't know it anyway."

"So you came here," she says softly. "You came here and hoped he'd still be around. After all these months, Castle?"

He shakes his head. "I was hoping he wasn't dead. But I think he is. I think he's dead and I think some part of me knew it. I knew he was dead and that's why it's been like this."

"That's why the amnesia," she sighs. "Protecting yourself, protecting all of us. Oh, Rick. I-"

"Stupid," he mutters, pressing his thumb into his temple. "It only made it worse."

"How did he die?" she says. It's not total acceptance, but it's better than _oh, you're probably mixing things up again_.

"I don't know," he admits.

He can't bring it to memory. It's floating in the darkness, deep down, and he can't get it to float up. _Dead in the water._

"There was a boat," he croaks.

"A boat?" She sounds as confused as he is. The sky has begun to sift, grey to white. As if the clouds are disintegrating. And then he realizes that snowflakes are coming down, appearing as if in thin air to drop silently over the world.

"It's snowing," he says inanely.

"Yeah," she frowns, glances behind her.

"It's cold." He wishes his father had shown up here. He really does. But there's nothing for it; Jackson Hunt is more than just an absent parent this time.

He's gone. He knows it in his cold-cracked bones. Just gone.

Castle leans back and closes his eyes again, letting the snow touch his cheeks, little wet spots, colder and colder.

"A boat," she whispers, jerking beside him and clutching his arm. "Castle, a boat?"

He lifts his head again. "Yeah, somewhere in the murk of my memories. Felt seasick. My head-"

"Chief Brady said they found a derelict. This was the same month that body showed up. I think. The same month. There was a _boat_, Castle."

Kate is suddenly scrambling off the bench and grabbing his hands, tugging so hard that he lurches towards her. She gives a sharp noise of triumph, her excitement ringing in the winter air, the snow dusting her hair and melting as she moves.

"Castle, this is a _lead_. A lead. You had engine grease on those scrubs, and there was salt - _sea_ salt - and there were - there were bar fights and missing dogs-"

"Oh my?" he interrupts.

Kate laughs, staring at him, her whole face breaking open with joy. Her lips curl into a smile that stops the world and then she leans in and kisses him, her tongue a vivid heat inside his mouth.

When she leans back, he blinks at her, at that incongruous smile of hers, but sparks of warmth are being set off in his chest, lighting up.

"Come on. We're going to the Hamptons," she says, dragging him forward. "Before the snow gets any worse."


	22. Chapter 22

**Learn to Have Been**

* * *

_February 2015_

"I'm so tired of delays," he whines in her ear. They're about to step off the subway, it's slowing now, and it would only be a matter of switching to the train station to head for the Hamptons. One shift in direction, right instead of left. (And, okay, yes, a transfer, but that is still _forward_ movement, towards every answer to every question he's had for the last ten months.)

But she's pushing him off the car and down the wrong way, towards the line that will take them to the loft.

"Come on, Beckett. Can't we just go?"

"You need a coat."

"But I'm fine. All warmed up."

"Car's faster," she says, sing-songing back to him as she threads through the crowds to the right platform.

"But going all the way back for a coat is stupid."

"Picking up the keys takes the same amount of steps as grabbing your coat, Castle. Besides, if we're gonna road trip, I'm gonna have to pee." She wriggles her eyebrows at him over her shoulder, and he laughs out loud - _he _said that once. And he remembers it. A memory that hasn't been altered or tainted, an early memory of them.

She snags his hand and forces him to follow, and he does. They're in-step now. Synced. It's been hit or miss when it's happened at all these days, he's missed that 'of one mind' thing that always bubbled under the surface of their conversation.

They used to finish each other's sentences, but at least they're getting there.

She pushes him onto the subway car and jumps in a second after him, grinning as her boots hit the floor and the doors clamp shut. She grabs him for balance as the car jerks away from the platform, and they do a coordinated half-step backwards and to the side, settling in for the ride. Kate doesn't let go of him.

"What do you want to bet that derelict boat is our key?" she says. She's practically giddy, on her toes.

"Bet?" he grins back, eyebrow lifting. "Pride or-"

"Clothes," she husks, her mouth at his ear as the car sways. He clutches her hip and a hand rail both, awareness racing under his skin.

"Double or nothing," he growls back. "And when I win, that's _you_ in nothing."

"Except I'm right," she smirks. "You know I am. Which puts _you_ in nothing, Rick Castle."

He nods thoughtfully, brow furrowing, really hamming it up. "Hm. Yes, I see. I'm at a distinct disadvantage here. Whatever shall I do?"

Kate laughs, a crystal thing, shining like a snowflake spiraling to the earth, and then, shockingly, she throws her arms around his neck and kisses his mouth - hard.

Feels pretty great, this close to the truth.

* * *

"No, no," she says, pushing the phone into her ear with her shoulder to hold it there. "We're coming to you, Chief Brady."

Castle is driving. She can't believe she let him drive. He's done an excessive amount over the speed limit, but she's kept that to herself. At least the snow doesn't seem to stick.

Brady gives a noise of delight. "I could meet you half-"

Castle pulls the car straight into the substation parking lot and Kate winces. "Actually, Chief, we're pulling up right outside evidence storage. I know it's late - and completely last minute - but I need a look at that boat. You have it in dry dock?"

"Boat. Wait, hold on. You're here?"

She hears it practically in stereo as she opens the car door, that high-end squeak of surprise from the Chief. "We're here. Where - where are you?"

The substation door pops open and Chief Brady pokes his head out.

His weapon is drawn.

"Whoa, whoa, just us, Chief Brady," Castle calls out, raising his hands. "Castle and Beckett."

Kate drops the phone. "What's going on?"

"You're here about the boat?"

"Why are _you_ here?" she asks. Not polite, and she shakes her head, steps forward as Chief Brady lowers his weapon. "Your substation, you have a right to be here, of course. Look, can we-"

"Someone has been here," Brady says awkwardly. "Someone from your neck of the woods. Why I'm here."

For one breathless moment, Kate expects Jackson Hunt to walk out of that substation, his weathered, squinting, too-charming smile. She expects it so fiercely that when no one appears in the doorway, she hears distinctly the sharp, disappointed exhale from her husband.

Brady gives an awkward chuckle. "Okay, sorry, I should say - someone from your city."

Kate sighs, glancing over her shoulder at Castle. He gives her a tight smile back and comes around the front of the car to greet Chief Brady. Kate follows them inside the substation where it's warm, but she's unwilling to delay a moment longer.

"Chief, the boat. That derelict you were telling me about."

"You find the owner? Because-"

"No," Castle interrupts, frowning.

Kate shifts a quelling look to him. "In a manner of speaking," she hedges. "We think it's tied to our case."

Brady does that maddening head-scratch move where he stares at them both, trying to figure out the puzzle for himself.

"Chief," Castle interrupts. "The boat."

"Right. Well. The boat was - the reason I'm here?"

Oh, no.

"A team of Feds came and got it. Said it was a crime scene. They found blood splatter using those ALS wands."

"ALS?" Castle mutters.

"Alternative Light Source," Kate supplies quickly. "Feds came and _took_ the whole boat? Just like that."

Chief Brady rubs the top of his head. "Yeah. They had chain of custody paperwork. Said it was drug smuggling, RICO Act stuff. I signed it over. They had an eighteen-wheeler haul it off - they brought the truck with them so they knew it was here. I didn't think it was important."

Feds have the body, so of _course_ that gives them a huge headstart on discovery of the original crime scene. Which means Volkov _was_ on that boat. She's right.

They are so close.

"Chief?" Castle asks, sinking down to the sheriff's desktop. "Which Feds?"

Brady looks happy to have an answer for them. "Oh, the CIA. I checked their references, called the number, did everything by the book. CIA. They said it was about one of their own."

* * *

Castle holds his tongue just right and the machine cooperates and the stars align and there it is.

The perfect cup of coffee.

He hopes.

He's learned that coffee makers are finicky and it's all about how strong to make it and just how little creamer to add. She deserves something to go right for once. They both do.

It's been a fruitless night. No boat, no body, the CIA holds all the cards here. Castle and Beckett have spent the last hour on the phone, trying to get someone to answer their questions, but closed-mouthed doesn't even begin to describe the stonewall going on here.

Castle glances up and catches sight of his wife through the wide window. She's on the phone with another 'contact' - he's got a feeling this time it's Sorenson who's trying to put her through to someone higher. Not like the FBI plays nicely with the CIA; Sorenson is totally a last-ditch effort.

Kate catches his gaze, all the way from the break room to the sheriff's office, and she gives him a weak smile. He smiles back, holds up the coffee mug.

Interest stirs in her eyes and he cradles the mug in both hands, being extra careful as he steps through the doorway.

"Coffee?" he suggests.

She bites her bottom lip and reaches out a rather tentative hand. He puts the mug against her palm and wraps her fingers around it, and Kate leans in, takes a closed-eyed sniff.

Oh man, the suspense is killing him.

"Thanks," she murmurs. She lifts the mug to her lips and takes a slow slip, still on hold with the agency.

But the groan that falls out of her mouth is entirely indecent.

"Castle," she hums, eyes opening to him.

Wow. That should be illegal.

"This is - perfect," she husks, her gaze dark, absorbing, like she's drinking _him _in.

Chief Brady knuckle-knocks at exactly that moment, shuffling inside the sheriff's office, clearing his throat. Castle shifts discreetly and steps behind the desk next to his wife. Kate grunts and jabs her thumb at the glowing red disc on her phone, ending the call. She scrapes a hand back through her hair, scratching at her scalp, and Chief Brady pauses as if in fear of Kate's response.

"Sorry to bother you, Detective Beckett. Mr Castle."

"Not a bother, I just got disconnected," Kate growls. "_After_ being on hold for fifteen minutes."

"I - uh - I'm supposed to make dinner for... uh, you know, a - well - a lady friend-"

"A _woman_, Chief Brady?" Castle gasps, clasping his hands together in rapt attention. "Do tell."

Chief Brady flushes absolutely scarlet and Kate thwacks Castle's shoulder, shaking her head. "Ignore him, Chief. He loves gossip."

"It's not gossip if I'm getting it straight from the source," he protests.

Chief Brady rubs the back of his neck, still mostly red, and he gives Castle a half-shrug. "Well, she's - a lady. And a friend. And a woman, yes. Pretty. I think so, anyway. And smart. Wow, she's smart. But I'm supposed to be making dinner after my shift and-"

"That was hours ago," Kate supplies. Her brow furrows and her shoulders drop. "I'm sorry we've taken up so much of your time. And for phone calls we could make from home. You should have kicked us out."

Castle feels sorry for her, that momentary line of defeat across her forehead, the slump of her spine. "Kate's right," he tells Brady. "We'll put ourselves up at Casa de Castle for the night. We appreciate your doing all this, giving us copies of the report."

Kate nods tightly. "You've been a help," she says, extending her hand to Chief Brady. He takes it and does a half-feint hug, pulls back in a blush, and starts to usher them out. Castle gathers the case folder, but Kate grabs the mug and takes a healthy chug, her eyes flitting to his, and then sets it down on the desk again, a longing look.

Brady locks up and Castle gets back in their car, urging Kate on by starting the ignition. She slides into the passenger seat, rolling her eyes at him, and Castle lifts a hand and waves at Chief Brady.

The drive to his Hamptons home is in silence, two entities orbiting each other, thinking their separate but parallel thoughts, and then Kate reaches over and takes his hand, fingers scratching at his thigh to do so. He understands it as a prelude to a conversation she wants to have, so he waits for it.

Doesn't take long. "I haven't been back here since..."

Oh. "The wedding that wasn't?" he comments. "Me either."

She sighs.

And there it is, rising above the winter-bare trees at the highest point of the rolling hill. They'll have to uncover furniture and turn on the electricity from the system in the basement just to make it livable for tonight.

Castle steers his car to the gate at the end of the drive, the window sliding down smoothly so that a blast of cold air gusts inside. He leans out and presses his finger against the keypad, withdrawing at the crusted film over the keys.

"Ew," he mutters. "It's rusted."

Castle enters the code, rubs his fingers together to get rid of the crunchy feel against his skin. The gate swings back and he rolls up his window, sees Kate shiver in the passenger seat.

"What's up?" he asks.

"Someone walked over my grave," she mutters back, her eyes straight ahead.

Maybe coming here was a bad idea - too many memories. But Castle angles the car up the drive and through the gate, watching in the rearview mirror until he sees the gate begin to close automatically. He tries not to get his fingers on the leather of the steering wheel, still rubbing at the substance.

"Rust?" she says suddenly, leaning over to peer at his hand.

"What?" Castle glances down, sees the top of her head. Rather distracting.

"What's on your hand?"

"The keypad was rusted. Like you said, we haven't been back. Salt air."

She's got his hand now in her own lap, and he's perfectly content with that, her nails lightly scratching to get rid of the flakes that seem to stick to his skin. He pulls to a stop in front of the attached garage, decides to park it inside - out of the weather in case the snow gets any thicker. Digging out the car would be annoying in the morning.

He has to shake off her grip to punch the garage door opener, and as the door raises, his headlights hit the wide interior.

"Oh God," she gasps. "Castle."

Sprawled just inside the connecting door, slumped at the single step down into the garage, is Jackson Hunt.

"Castle, that wasn't rust. That was blood."

He's dead.


	23. Chapter 23

**Learn to Have Been**

* * *

February 2015

**_X_**

Kate stands at the crest of the hill, the snow layering the yard, the wind wicked as it eddies. Winter plays against the waves at the horizon, but all she sees is that they've come full circle.

She hears Castle attempting a quiet approach behind her, his feet on the wood of the patio, then the light crunch of his shoes through the snow to reach her side.

Castle takes her hand and wraps it around a mug, and immediately the warmth burns her cold fingers; she stares down and inhales the steam of espresso.

"How?" she asks. The house is crawling with agents.

"I just did," he shrugs. "Walked right in. Easier to ask forgiveness than permission."

"Oh, your usual m.o. then?" she chuckles.

He smirks back, but there's this latent tension riding on the judgment of the cup in her hand.

After that surprisingly good cup of station brew that he somehow magicked into existence (of which she only got a few sips, so even now she's not sure it wasn't just wishful thinking on her part), she's got her hopes entirely too high. When she glances at his face, eyes squinting against the weather, she knows he does too.

Kate takes a tentative sip of the espresso and has to close her eyes, press her lips together to keep from shaking with relief. It's exactly right, that special blend of rich, heavy flavor and foam, and it is exactly what she needs. And didn't know she needed.

She blinks and stares down into the cup.

"I should be," she starts, clearing her throat when it cracks. "Should be making you coffee."

Castle draws his arm around her and tugs her close, making a buffer between her and the wind. She keeps the espresso pressed protectively to her chest but turns her head into his shoulder.

"Been waiting to surprise you with that," he whispers. "Macchiato is next."

His nose buries itself in her hair; she can feel him smile at her jaw but his sigh chases soon after it.

His father is dead.

Kate slides her arm into his coat and takes another step into him, their hips bumping. When the garage had lifted, Kate was the first to open her door, first to jog across the headlight-bathed gravel, first at the older man's side.

Signs of decay, skin blue-dark, rigor mortis well set. Bloodied bandage at his side. Kate had tried to be circumspect about her inventory. "Did you happen to overhear anything while you were in the kitchen making me coffee?"

His fingers grip her shoulder and release. "A few things. A partially-healed knife wound in his - his side. Under his ribs."

"Fatal?" she murmurs.

"They weren't that forthcoming." Another sigh. "But it seems like."

Kate takes another sip of her espresso, eyes closing to the winter white. "Anything else?"

"Not from them." His fingers burrow into the hair at her neck, his thumb rubbing over the knobs of her spine. "But I'm starting to think Volkov took me to his boat, held me there until my father found him. And then... just pieces."

Kate opens her eyes and lifts her chin to catch sight of his face. "You want my theory?" she says carefully.

"Always."

She doesn't smile, just keeps studying him until she's certain he's up for this. "Jackson Hunt is a loner - a rouge agent, at the worst, a legend at best. He tracks Volkov to the boat. He finds you, but being on his own - no back-up - and with you..."

"Out of commission," he supplies. "Head injury, too confused to help the great escape."

She nods. "He's backed into a corner. The mission goes bad trying to get you out of there. He manages to bring you to land."

"Wounded then?"

"No blood on the clothes you were found in, but for a spot on your scrubs, which Lanie supposes was from walking - your cuff dragged through it as you walked."

"So he uses a stealth attack, maybe takes out some guards, unchains me-"

"Un_chains_ you?" she gasps, jerking to attention.

His mouth opens and closes again; Castle's hand comes up to his neck and he swallows roughly.

Kate flinches. "Your neck? Oh, God. Castle. He put a chain around - around your neck?"

"In a cage," he hoarses. Something so dark flits across his eyes that Kate can't move for a moment.

A gust of wind pushes her off-balance and into him. Castle drops his arm to catch her, hugging her tight. But he's the one shivering.

Kate clutches the espresso, lifts her hand to the back of his neck, stroking her fingers along the skin.

"So if he's not wounded," Castle starts. He takes a breath. "If he wasn't wounded then, why did he leave me to wander the road?"

Kate angles her body into his, but Castle doesn't want sympathy; he wants the story. She knows him well enough by now that she doesn't stop theorizing, even though she can feel him struggling.

"Volkov came after you both," she states. "That was the black Mercedes that Campbell says cut him off. You and your father were on foot, slow-going, and so - what other choice was there? He led Volkov off the scent; he doubled back and laid a false trail, leaving you on your own."

"And then?" Castle rasps.

"Well, I suppose it was a rather epic showdown. You'd been picked up by Campbell, so Volkov went to ground. Hunt went after Volkov once you were safely home. And since you were reportedly amnesiac, Hunt didn't come to us at the loft and try to explain."

"No, he wouldn't, would he?"

Kate goes quiet at the present tense construction, but Castle sighs and dips his chin to the top of her head.

"I mean, he wouldn't have." He lets out a growl and his grip tightens. "He never explained himself. Never even tried. He fed me half-truths at every encounter-"

"It's okay," she says quietly. "Because he saved your life, Rick. He rescued you; he brought you home. Whatever he didn't do, he at least did that."

"And then he exacted vengeance and brutally murdered Gregory Volkov," Castle mutters. "Dumped him in Central Park where he _knew_ you would catch the case. And then crawled off to die, damn it."

"He protected you," Kate says carefully. "By ending it. But he was injured. Maybe it was just that knife wound and he hoped to recuperate off the grid - there was no way we'd be showing up here any time soon. Or maybe it was worse than that, and he knew you'd - you would know what to do."

Castle grunts. "Like call Agent Danberg? I'm not sure he had that in mind."

"Are you so sure?" she whispers. "Because Sophia Turner was Danberg's partner and _she_ knew your father. Or of him."

Castle goes silent, maybe working on the elements of their guesswork, plugging pieces in where they might fit. She's been thinking about this all night, the story, because she's not sure Castle will ever get some of those memories back.

She's not sure she wants him to. She's willing to do without his sardonic sense of humor and his fantastic coffee if it means the more horrific details are also gone. He's learning the coffee, and his humor as well, and while it seems like other things have floated to the surface, she hopes a chain around his neck and a cage stay buried and gone.

"We were supposed to be married here," he sighs. "And now it's a crime scene."

Full circle, back to where they should have begun.

No, not begun. They don't begin with a wedding - they began years ago, when she opened the cover of one of her mother's books and fell into it. They began when he stared back at her from the other side of the interrogation table and offered to let her spank him.

They were supposed to have been married here, but at least this time, he stands with her. They survey his Hamptons home in winter silence, the yard covered with a thin layer of snowmelt, the pool closed up and the lights turned off. She wonders if he remembers anything of their plans for that day, their wedding day, since other things are coming to him now.

"We were supposed to be married here," she says finally. "And then you were taken from me and I - whatever else he did, Castle, he made it possible for us to be here now."

The gruff tug of his arms around her nearly knocks her off her feet, but she clutches his coat and hangs on, enduring the rough embrace.

"I wish I had seen you in your mom's dress," he husks.

"You did," she whispers, biting the inside of her cheek. The wind takes her words and maybe he doesn't hear it, maybe that memory can be lost to the wind as well, that morning when she twirled around in front of him and spun on the tips of her toes, showing off the dress before they started their ill-fated wedding day.

"Do you still have it?" he asks. His body turns aside from hers, giving her a little space, and she lifts her eyes to him. He frowns. "Kate? You didn't - it's not ruined is it?"

It is ruined. But not like he means. "I have it. It was my mother's." And it's cursed. She'll never let those traditions go any further, though she can't bear to give it away.

"Could you wear it for me? Just to see. One time."

She stares at him, his request like a fist in her gut. "Wear it. Like a-"

"What I missed," he says, a wrinkled-eyed smile. "Please? Private fashion show. I love the dress you wore to ours, but your mother's... and that day. So much is gone. I want it back."

Kate slides her fingers between his, squeezes. She can do this for him. She can. The dry cleaners even got the smoke out of the dress - it was the same place he sent all of her stuff after her apartment blew up.

And really, in the grand scheme of things, donning her mother's wedding dress and modeling it for him - letting him peel it off again - that's a much brighter picture than she imagined nearly ten months ago.

"I'll do that. It's - here actually. I didn't want it in the loft. Everything from that day got sent here." The gifts, the party favors, the decorations...

"Oh." His face falls and he seems to register something of the emotional impact it is for her, because he opens his mouth as if to say _never mind_.

"Tonight, Castle," she tells him. "After the Feds are done with us, we'll make new memories. Okay? New for us both."

Castle blinks and then grins at her, a wolfish thing. His free hand comes to the back of her head even as he moves in to claim a kiss, tugging her roughly against his hips with their joined hands.

She swallows a moan and lifts into him, cold and hot together, and the nip of his teeth at her bottom lip has her flaring brighter, going up on her toes.

The espresso cup falls and clunks against the snow, coffee staining the white, soaking in.

Castle breaks away, breathing hard, chuckling, and he nudges his nose into her cheek, angling her head back to the house. "Are they gone yet? I want to get this started."

She laughs a little breathlessly. The crime scene technicians are still up there. The CIA agents swarming the place. No one is looking their way, but she's certain the Men in Black have missed nothing.

"They made Volkov disappear, but at least they can't whisk away our home," Castle laughs.

She shakes her head, buries her face against his neck where it's warm, away from the wind, the house no longer in sight. He shelters her, arms coming around her body, and he drops his mouth to her ear.

After a moment, he starts giving her a running commentary of what's going on back at the house, of the body being taken away, the guys in suits talking to even more suits who have just shown up. She's not sure _when_ they'll get some privacy, but listening to his wry snark in her ear makes her relax. It's all Castle, her gracious husband, and even if the coffee has spilled, he can make her another.

She hasn't lost him; he's found.

**X**


End file.
